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BOOK     176.EL59   c.  1 

ELLIS    #    SEX    IN   RELATION   TO 

SOCIETY 


3    T153    0DDb3n3    1 


STUDIES 

IN  THE 

PSYCHOLOGY  OF  SEX 

VOLUME  VI 

SEX  IN  RELATION  TO  SOCIETY 


HAVELOCK  ELLIS 


PHILADELPHIA 

F.    A.    DAVIS    COMPANY,    PUBLISHERS 
1921 


I 

ill 


COPYRIGHT,  1910 

BY 

F.  A.   DAVIS  COMPANY 


[Registered  at  Stationers'  Hall,  London,  Eng.] 


Philadelphia,  Pa.,  U.  S.  A. 
Press  of  F.  A.  Davis  Company 
1914-16  Cherry  Street 


r 


STUDIES 


IN  THB 


Psychology  of  Sex 


HAVELOCK  ELLIS 


\ 


j 

/ 


HAVELOCK  ELUS'S 

STUDIES    IN    THE 

PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

(Complete  in  S«  Volume..) 


L  The  -ftS5  s^ju-r 

»■  Sexual  Inversion.  ^to-erotism. 

'»•  Analysis  of  the  Sexual  Impulse. 
I».  Sexual  Selection  in  Man. 

f'  EW,Si2Si,"k  T"e  Mechan»s««  »'  "f- 
nanc"  ^  S,ale  h  Pfe9" 

VI.  Sex  in  Relation  to  Soeiety. 

Each  volume  is  complete  in  itself 
Sold  in  Sets  or  Single  Volumes 

HsheJJy  thVautS, editi°?  V1  Eng^hpub- 
vy  me  author  s  permission. 


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PREFACE. 


In  the  previous  five  volumes  of  these  Studies,  I  have  dealt 
mainly  with  the  sexual  impulse  in  relation  to  its  object,  leaving 
out  of  account  the  external  persons  and  the  environmental 
influences  which  yet  may  powerfully  affect  that  impulse  and  its 
gratification.  We  cannot  afford,  however,  to  pass  unnoticed  this 
relationship  of  the  sexual  impulse  to  third  persons  and  to  the 
community  at  large  with  all  its  anciently  established  traditions. 
We  have  to  consider  sex  in  relation  to  society. 

In  so  doing,  it  will  be  possible  to  discuss  more  summarily 
than  in  preceding  volumes  the  manifold  and  important  problems 
that  are  presented  to  us.  In  considering  the  more  special  ques- 
tions of  sexual  psychology  we  entered  a  neglected  field  and  it 
was  necessary  to  expend  an  analytic  care  and  precision  which  at 
many  points  had  never  been  expended  before  on  these  questions. 
But  when  we  reach  the  relationships  of  sex  to  society  we  have  for 
the  most  part  no  such  neglect  to  encounter.  The  subject  of  every 
chapter  in  the  present  volume  could  easily  form,  and  often  has 
formed,  the  topic  of  a  volume,  and  the  literature  of  many  of 
these  subjects  is  already  extremely  voluminous.  It  must  there- 
fore be  our  main  object  here  not  to  accumulate  details  but  to 
place  each  subject  by  turn,  as  clearly  and  succinctly  as  may  be, 
in  relation  to  those  fundamental  principles  of  sexual  psychology 
which — so  far  as  the  data  at  present  admit — have  been  set  forth 
in  the  preceding  volumes. 

It  may  seem  to  some,  indeed,  that  in  this  exposition  I  should 
have  confined  myself  to  the  present,  and  not  included  so  wide  a 
sweep  of  the  course  of  human  history  and  the  traditions  of  the 
race.  It  may  especially  seem  that  I  have  laid  too  great  a  stress 
on  the  influence  of  Christianity  in  moulding  sexual  ideals  and 
establishing  sexual  institutions.     That,  I  am  convinced,  is  an 

(v) 


VI  PREFACE. 

error.  It  is  because  it  is  so  frequently  made  that  the  movements 
of  progress  among  us — movements  that  can  never  at  a^  period 
of  social  history  cease — are  by  many  so  seriously  misunderstood. 
We  cannot  escape  from  our  traditions.  There  never  has  been, 
and  never  can  be,  any  "age  of  reason/'  The  most  ardent  co-called 
"free-thinker/'  who  casts  aside  as  he  imagines  the  authority  of 
the  Christian  past,  is  still  held  by  that  past.  If  its  traditions  are 
not  absolutely  in  his  blood,  they  are  ingrained  in  the  texture  of 
all  the  social  institutions  into  which  he  was  born  and  they  affect 
even  his  modes  of  thinking.  The  latest  modifications  of  our 
institutions  are  inevitably  influenced  by  the  past  form  of  those 
institutions.  We  cannot  realize  where  we  are,  nor  whither  we  are 
moving,  unless  we  know  whence  we  came.  We  cannot  under- 
stand the  significance  of  the  changes  around  us,  nor  face  them 
with  cheerful  confidence,  unless  we  are  acquainted  with  the  drift 
of  the  great  movements  that  stir  all  civilization  in  never-ending 
cycles. 

In  discussing  sexual  questions  which  are  very  largely  matters 
of  social  hygiene  we  shall  thus  still  be  preserving  the  psycho- 
logical point  of  view.  Such  a  point  of  view  in  relation  to  these 
matters  is  not  only  legitimate  but  necessary.  Discussions  of 
social  hygiene  that  are  purely  medical  or  purely  juridical  or 
purely  moral  or  purely  theological  not  only  lead  to  conclusions 
that  are  often  entirely  opposed  to  each  other  but  they  obviously 
fail  to  possess  complete  applicability  to  the  complex  human  per- 
sonality. The  main  task  before  us  must  be  to  ascertain  what  best 
expresses,  and  what  best  satisfies,  the  totality  of  the  impulses  and 
ideas  of  civilized  men  and  women.  So  that  while  we  must  con- 
stantly bear  in  mind  medical,  legal,  and  moral  demands — which 
all  correspond  in  some  respects  to  some  individual  or  social  need 
— the  main  thing  is  to  satisfy  the  demands  of  the  whole  human 
person. 

It  is  necessary  to  emphasize  this  point  of  view  because  it 


PREFACE.  Vll 

would  seem  that  no  error  is  more  common,  among  writers  on 
the  hygienic  and  moral  problems  of  sex  than  the  neglect  of 
the  psychological  standpoint.  They  may  take,  for  instance,  the 
side  of  sexual  restraint,  or  the  side  of  sexual  unrestraint,  but 
they  fail  to  realize  that  so  narrow  a  basis  is  inadequate  for  the 
needs  of  complex  human  beings.  From  the  wider  psychological 
standpoint  we  recognize  that  we  have  to  conciliate  opposing 
impulses  that  are  both  alike  founded  on  the  human  psychic 
organism. 

In  the  preceding  volumes  of  these  Studies  I  have  sought  to 
refrain  from  the  expression  of  any  personal  opinion  and  to  main- 
tain, so  far  as  possible,  a  strictly  objective  attitude.  In  this 
endeavor,  I  trust,  I  have  been  successful  if  I  may  judge  from 
the  fact  that  I  have  received  the  sympathy  and  approval  of  all 
kinds  of  people,  not  less  of  the  rationalistic  free-thinker  than  of 
the  orthodox  believer,  of  those  who  accept,  as  well  as  of  those 
who  reject,  our  most  current  standards  of  morality.  This  is  as 
it  should  be,  for  whatever  our  criteria  of  the  worth  of  feelings 
and  of  conduct,  it  must  always  be  of  use  to  us  to  know  what 
exactly  are  the  feelings  of  people  and  how  those  feelings  tend  to 
affect  their  conduct.  In  the  present  volume,  however,  where 
social  traditions  necessarily  come  in  for  consideration  and  where 
we  have  to  discuss  the  growth  of  those  traditions  in  the  past  and 
their  probable  evolution  in  the  future,  I  am  not  sanguine  that 
the  objectivity  of  my  attitude  will  be  equally  clear  to  the  reader. 
I  have  here  to  set  down  not  only  what  people  actually  feel  and 
do  but  what  I  think  they  are  tending  to  feel  and  do.  That  is  a 
matter  of  estimation  only,  however  widely  and  however  cautiously 
it  is  approached ;  it  cannot  be  a  matter  of  absolute  demonstration. 
I  trust  that  those  who  have  followed  me  in  the  past  will  bear  with 
me  still,  even  if  it  is  impossible  for  them  always  to  accept  the 

conclusions  I  have  myself  reached. 

Havelock  Ellis. 

Carbis  Bay,  Cornwall,  England, 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER  I. 

The  Mother  and  Her  Child. 

PAGE 

The  Child's  Right  to  Choose  Its  Ancestry— How  This  is  Effected— 
The  Mother  the  Child's  Supreme  Parent — Motherhood  and  the 
Woman  Movement — The  Immense  Importance  of  Motherhood — 
Infant  Mortality  and  Its  Causes — The  Chief  Cause  in  the 
Mother — The  Need  of  Rest  During  Pregnancy — Frequency  of 
Premature  Birth — The  Function  of  the  State — Recent  Advance 
in  Puericulture — The  Question  of  Coitus  During  Pregnancy — • 
The  Need  of  Rest  During  Lactation — The  Mother's  Duty  to 
Suckle  Her  Child — The  Economic  Question — The  Duty  of  the 
State — Recent  Progress  in  the  Protection  of  the  Mother — The 
Fallacy  of  State  Nurseries 1 

CHAPTER  II. 

Sexual  Education. 

Nurture  Necessary  as  Well  as  Breed — Precocious  Manifestations  of 
the  Sexual  Impulse — Are  they  to  be  Regarded  as  Normal? — The 
Sexual  Play  of  Children — The  Emotion  of  Love  in  Childhood — 
Are  Town  Children  More  Precocious  Sexually  Than  Country 
Children? — Children's  Ideas  Concerning  the  Origin  of  Babies — 
Need  for  Beginning  the  Sexual  Education  of  Children  in  Early 
Years — The  Importance  of  Early  Training  in  Responsibility — 
Evil  of  the  Old  Doctrine  of  Silence  in  Matters  of  Sex — The  Evil 
Magnified  When  Applied  to  Girls — The  Mother  the  Natural  and 
Best  Teacher — The  Morbid  Influence  of  Artificial  Mystery  in  Sex 
Matters — Books  on  Sexual  Enlightenment  of  the  Young — Nature 
of  the  Mother's  Task — Sexual  Education  in  the  School — The 
Value  of  Botany — Zoology — Sexual  Education  After  Puberty — 
The  Necessity  of  Counteracting  Quack  Literature — Danger  of 
Neglecting  to  Prepare  for  the  First  Onset  of  Menstruation — The 
Right  Attitude  Towards  Woman's  Sexual  Life — The  Vital  Neces- 
sity of  the  Hygiene  of  Menstruation  During  Adolescence — Such 
Hygiene  Compatible  with  the  Educational  and  Social  Equality 
of  the  Sexes — The  Invalidism  of  Women  Mainly  Due  to  Hygienic 


X  CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

Neglect — Good  Influence  of  Physical  Training  on  Women  and  Bad 
Influence  of  Athletics — The  Evils  of  Emotional  Suppression — 
Need  of  Teaching  the  Dignity  of  Sex — Influence  of  These  Factors 
on  a  Woman's  Fate  in  Marriage — Lectures  and  Addresses  on 
Sexual  Hygiene — The  Doctor's  Part  in  Sexual  Education — 
Pubertal  Initiation  Into  the  Ideal  World — The  Place  of  the  Re- 
ligious and  Ethical  Teacher — The  Initiation  Rites  of  Savages  Into 
Manhood  and  Womanhood — The  Sexual  Influence  of  Literature — 
The  Sexual  Influence  of  Art 33 

CHAPTER  III. 

Sexual  Education  and  Nakedness. 

The  Greek  Attitude  Towards  Nakedness — How  the  Romans  Modi- 
fied That  Attitude — The  Influence  of  Christianity — Nakedness  in 
Mediseval  Times — Evolution  of  the  Horror  of  Nakedness — Con- 
comitant Change  in  the  Conception  of  Nakedness — Prudery — The 
Romantic  Movement — Rise  of  a  New  Feeling  in  Regard  to  Naked- 
ness— The  Hygienic  Aspect  of  Nakedness — How  Children  May  Be 
Accustomed  to  Nakedness — Nakedness  Not  Inimical  to  Modesty — 
The  Instinct  of  Physical  Pride — The  Value  of  Nakedness  in  Edu- 
cation— The  ^Esthetic  Value  of  Nakedness — The  Human  Body  as 
One  of  the  Prime  Tonics  of  Life — How  Nakedness  May  Be  Culti- 
vated— The  Moral  Value  of  Nakedness 95 

CHAPTER  IV. 

The  Valuation  of  Sexual  Love. 

The  Conception  of  Sexual  Love — The  Attitude  of  Mediseval  Asceti- 
cism— St.  Bernard  and  St.  Odo  of  Cluny — The  Ascetic  Insistence 
on  the  Proximity  of  the  Sexual  and  Excretory  Centres- — Love 
as  a  Sacrament  of  Nature — The  Idea  of  the  Impurity  of  Sex  in 
Primitive  Religions  Generally — Theories  of  the  Origin  of  This 
Idea — The  Anti-Ascetic  Element  in  the  Bible  and  Early  Chris- 
tianity— Clement  of  Alexandria — St.  Augustine's  Attitude — The 
Recognition  of  the  Sacredness  of  the  Body  by  Tertullian,  Rufinus 
and  Athanasius — The  Reformation — The  Sexual  Instinct  Re- 
garded as  Beastly — The  Human  Sexual  Instinct  Not  Animal-like 
— Lust  and  Love — The  Definition  of  Love — Love  and  Names  for 
Love  Unknown  in  Some  Parts  of  the  World — Romantic  Love  of 
Late  Development  in  the  White  Race — The  Mystery  of  Sexual  De- 
sire— Whether  Love  is  a  Delusion — The  Spiritual  as  Well  as  the 
Physical  Structure  of  the  World  in  Part  Built  up  on  Sexual  Love 
The  Testimony  of  Men  of  Intellect  to  the  Supremacy  of  Love. ...    118 


CONTENTS.  XI 

CHAPTER  V. 

The  Function  of  Chastity.  „ 

PAGE 

Chastity  Essential  to  the  Dignity  of  Love — The  Eighteenth  Century 
Revolt  Against  the  Ideal  of  Chastity — Unnatural  Forms  of 
Chastity — The  Psychological  Basis  of  Asceticism — Asceticism  and 
Chastity  as  Savage  Virtues — The  Significance  of  Tahiti — Chastity 
Among  Barbarous  Peoples — Chastity  Among  the  Early  Christians 
— Struggles  of  the  Saints  with  the  Flesh — The  Romance  of 
Christian  Chastity — Its  Decay  in  Mediaeval  Times — Aucassin  et 
Nicolette  and  the  New  Romance  of  Chaste  Love — The  Unchastity 
of  the  Northern  Barbarians — The  Penitentials — Influence  of  the. 
Renaissance  and  the  Reformation — The  Revolt  Against  Virginity 
as  a  Virtue — The  Modern  Conception  of  Chastity  as  a  Virtue — 
The  Influences  That  Favor  the  Virtue  of  Chastity — Chastity  as 
a  Discipline — The  Value  of  Chastity  for  the  Artist — Potency  and 
Impotence  in  Popular  Estimation — The  Correct  Definitions  of 
Asceticism  and  Chastity 143 

CHAPTER  VI. 

The  Problem  of  Sexual  Abstinence. 
The  Influence  of  Tradition — The  Theological  Conception  of  Lust — 
Tendency  of  These  Influences  to  Degrade  Sexual  Morality — Their 
Result  in  Creating  the  Problem  of  Sexual  Abstinence — The  Pro- 
tests Against  Sexual  Abstinence — Sexual  Abstinence  and  Genius — 
Sexual  Abstinence  in  Women — The  Advocates  of  Sexual  Absti- 
nence—Intermediate Attitude — Unsatisfactory  Nature  of  the 
Whole  Discussion — Criticism  of  the  Conception  of  Sexual  Absti- 
nence— Sexual  Abstinence  as  Compared  to  Abstinence  from  Food — 
No  Complete  Analogy — The  Morality  of  Sexual  Abstinence  En- 
tirely Negative — Is  It  the  Physician's  Duty  to  Advise  Extra- 
Conjugal  Sexual  Intercourse? — Opinions  of  Those  Who  Affirm 
or  Deny  This  Duty — The  Conclusion  Against  Such  Advice — The 
Physician  Bound  by  the  Social  and  Moral  Ideas  of  His  Age — 
The  Physician  as  Reformer — Sexual  Abstinence  and  Sexual  Hy- 
giene— Alcohol — The  Influence  of  Physical  and  Mental  Exer- 
cise— The  Inadequacy  of  Sexual  Hygiene  in  This  Field — The 
Unreal  Nature  of  the  Conception  of  Sexual  Abstinence — The 
Necessity  of  Replacing  It  by  a  More  Positive  Ideal 178 

CHAPTER  VII. 

Prostitution. 
I.  The   Orgy: — The   Religious    Origin   of  the    Orgy — The   Feast  of 
Fools — Recognition  of  the  Orgy  by  the  Greeks  and  Romans — 


xii  CONSENTS. 

PAGH 

The  Orgy  Among  Savages — The  Drama — The  Object  Subserved 
by  the  Orgy 218 

II.  The  Origin  and  Development  of  Prostitution; — The  Definition  of 
Prostitution — Prostitution  Among  Savages — The  Conditions  Un- 
der Which  Professional  Prostitution  Arises — Sacred  Prostitu- 
tion— The  Rite  of  Mylitta — The  Practice  of  Prostitution  to 
Obtain  a  Marriage  Portion — The  Pise  of  Secular  Prostitution  in 
Greece — Prostitution  in  the  East — India,  China,  Japan,  etc. — 
Prostitution  in  Rome — The  Influence  of  Christianity  on  Prosti- 
tution— The  Effort  to  Combat  Prostitution — The  Mediaeval 
Brothel — The  Appearance  of  the  Courtesan — Tullia  D'Aragona 
— Veronica  Franco — Ninon  de  Lenclos — Later  Attempts  to  Eradi- 
cate Prostitution — The  Regulation  of  Prostitution — Its  Futility 
Becoming  Recognized 224 

III.  The  Causes  of  Prostitution: — Prostitution  as  a  Part  of  the 
Marriage  System — The  Complex  Causation  of  Prostitution — The 
Motives  Assigned  by  Prostitutes — (1)  Economic  Factor  of  Prosti- 
tution— Poverty  Seldom  the  Chief  Motive  for  Prostitution — 
But  Economic  Pressure  Exerts  a  Real  Influence — The  Large  Pro- 
portion of  Prostitutes  Recruited  from  Domestic  Service — Signifi- 
cance of  This  Fact — (2)  The  Biological  Factor  of  Prostitution — 
The  So-called  Born-Prostitute — Alleged  Identity  with  the  Born- 
Criminal — The  Sexual  Instinct  in  Prostitutes — The  Physical  and 
Psychic  Characters  of  Prostitutes — (3)  Moral  Necessity  as  a 
Factor  in  the  Existence  of  Prostitution — The  Moral  Advocates 
of  Prostitution — The  Moral  Attitude  of  Christianity  Towards 
Prostitution — The  Attitude  of  Protestantism — Recent  Advocates 
of  the  Moral  Necessity  of  Prostitution — (4)  Civilizational  Value 
as  a  Factor  of  Prostitution — The  Influence  of  Urban  Life — The 
Craving  for  Excitement — Why  Servant-girls  so  Often  Turn  to 
Prostitution — The  Small  Part  Played  by  Seduction — Prostitutes 
Come  Largely  from  the  Country — The  Appeal  of  Civilization 
Attracts  Women  to  Prostitution — The  Corresponding  Attraction 
Felt  by  Men — The  Prostitute  as  Artist  and  Leader  of  Fashion — 
The  Charm  of  Vulgarity 254 

IV.  The  Present  Social  Attitude  Tmvards  Prostitution: — The  Decay 
of  the  Brothel — The  Tendency  to  the  Humanization  of  Prostitu- 
tion— The  Monetary  Aspects  of  Prostitution — The  Geisha — The 
Hetaira- — The  Moral  Revolt  Against  Prostitution— Squalid  Vice 
Based  on  Luxurious  Virtue — The  Ordinary  Attitude  Towards 
Prostitutes — Its  Cruelty  Absurd — The  Need  of  Reforming  Pros- 
titution— The  Need  of  Reforming  Marriage — TheBe  Two  Needs 
Closely  Correlated — The  Dynamic  Relationships  Involved 302 


CONTENTS.  Xlll 

CHAPTER  VIII. 

The  Conquest  of  the  Venereal  Diseases. 

pagh 
The  Significance  of  the  Venereal  Diseases — The  History  of  Syphilis 
The  Problem  of  Its  Origin — The  Social  Gravity  of  Syphilis — The 
Social  Dangers  of  Gonorrhoea — The  Modern  Change  in  the  Meth- 
ods of  Combating  Venereal  Diseases — Causes  of  the  Decay  of  the 
System  of  Police  Regulation — Necessity  of  Facing  the  Facts — 
The  Innocent  Victims  of  Venereal  Diseases — Diseases  Not 
Crimes — The  Principle  of  Notification— The  Scandinavian  System 
— Gratuitous  Treatment — Punishment  For  Transmitting  Vene- 
real Diseases — Sexual  Education  in  Relation  to  Venereal  Diseases 
— Lectures,  Etc. — Discussion  in  Novels  and  on  the  Stage — The 
"Disgusting"  Not  the  "Immoral" 319 

CHAPTER  IX. 

Sexual  Morality. 

Prostitution  in  Relation  to  Our  Marriage  System — Marriage  and 
Morality— The  Definition  of  the  Term  "Morality" — Theoretical 
Morality — Its  Division  Into  Traditional  Morality  and  Ideal 
Morality — Practical  Morality — Practical  Morality  Based  on 
Custom — The  Only  Subject  of  Scientific  Ethics — The  Reaction 
Between  Theoretical  and  Practical  Morality — Sexual  Morality 
in  the  Past  an  Application  of  Economic  Morality — The  Com- 
bined Rigidity  and  Laxity  of  This  Morality — The  Growth 
of  a  Specific  Sexual  Morality  and  the  Evolution  of  Moral 
Ideals — Manifestations  of  Sexual  Morality — Disregard  of  the 
Forms  of  Marriage — Trial  Marriage — Marriage  After  Con- 
ception of  Child — Phenomena  in  Germany,  Anglo-Saxon  Coun- 
tries, Russia,  etc. — The  Status  of  Woman — The  Historical  Tend- 
ency Favoring  Moral  Equality  of  Women  with  Men — The  Theory 
of  the  Matriarchate — Mother-Descent — Women  in  Babylonia — 
Egypt — Rome — The  Eighteenth  and  Nineteenth  Centuries — The 
Historical  Tendency  Favoring  Moral  Inequality  of  Woman — The 
Ambiguous  Influence  of  Christianity — Influence  of  Teutonic  Cus- 
tom and  Feudalism — Chivalry — Woman  in  England — The  Sale  of 
Wives — The  Vanishing  Subjection  of  Woman — Inaptitude  of  the 
Modern  Man  to  Domineer — The  Growth  of  Moral  Responsibility 
in  Women — The  Concomitant  Development  of  Economic  Indepen- 
dence— The  Increase  of  Women  Who  Work — Invasion  of  the 
Modern  Industrial  Field  by  Women — In  How  Far  This  Is  Socially 
Justifiable — The  Sexual  Responsibility  of  Women  and  Its  Conse- 
quences— The  Alleged  Moral  Inferiority  of  Women — The  "Self- 


XIV  CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

Sacrifice"  of  Women — Society  Not  Concerned  with  Sexual  Rela- 
tionships— Procreation  the  Sole  Sexual  Concern  of  the  State — 
The  Supreme  Importance  of  Maternity 362 

CHAPTER  X. 

Marriage. 

The  Definition  of  Marriage — Marriage  Among  Animals — The  Pre- 
dominance of  Monogamy — The  Question  of  Group  Marriage — 
Monogamy  a  Natural  Fact,  Not  Based  on  Human  Law — The  Tend- 
ency to  Place  the  Form  of  Marriage  Above  the  Fact  of  Marriage 
— The  History  of  Marriage — Marriage  in  Ancient  Rome — Ger- 
manic Influence  on  Marriage — Bride-Sale — The  Ring — The  Influ- 
ence of  Christianity  on  Marriage — The  Great  Extent  of  this 
Influence — The  Sacrament  of  Matrimony — Origin  and  Growth 
of  the  Sacramental  Conception — The  Church  Made  Marriage  a 
Public  Act — Canon  Law — Its  Sound  Core — Its  Development — Its 
Confusions  and  Absurdities — Peculiarities  of  English  Marriage 
Law — Influence  of  the  Reformation  on  Marriage — The  Protestant- 
Conception  of  Marriage  as  a  Secular  Contract — The  Puritan  Re- 
form of  Marriage — Milton  as  the  Pioneer  of  Marriage  Reform — 
His  Views  on  Divorce — The  Backward  Position  of  England  in 
Marriage  Reform — Criticism  of  the  English  Divorce  Law — Tradi- 
tions of  the  Canon  Law  Still  Persistent — The  Question  of  Damages 
for  Adultery — Collusion  as  a  Bar  to  Divorce — Divorce  in  France, 
Germany,  Austria,  Russia,  etc. — The  United  States — Impossibil- 
ity of  Deciding  by  Statute  the  Causes  for  Divorce — Divorce  by 
Mutual  Consent — Its  Origin  and  Development — Impeded  by  the 
Traditions  of  Canon  Law — Wilhelm  von  Humboldt — Modern 
Pioneer  Advocates  of  Divorce  by  Mutual  Consent — The  Argu- 
ments Against  Facility  of  Divorce — The  Interests  of  the  Chil- 
dren— The  Protection  of  Women — The  Present  Tendency  of  the 
Divorce  Movement — Marriage  Not  a  Contract — The  Proposal  of 
Marriage  for  a  Term  of  Years — Legal  Disabilities  and  Disad- 
advantages  in  the  Position  of  the  Husband  and  the  Wife — Mar- 
riage Not  a  Contract  But  a  Fact — Only  the  Non-Essentials  of 
Marriage,  Not  the  Essentials,  a  Proper  Matter  for  Contract — 
The  Legal  Recognition  of  Marriage  as  a  Fact  Without  Any  Cere- 
mony— Contracts  of  the  Person  Opposed  to  Modern  Tendencies — 
The  Factor  of  Moral  Responsibility — Marriage  as  an  Ethical 
Sacrament — Personal  Responsibility  Involves  Freedom — Freedom 
the  Best  Guarantee  of  Stability — False  Ideas  of  Individualism — 
Modern  Tendency  of  Marriage — With  the  Birth  of  a  Child  Mar- 


CONTENTS.  XV 

PAGE 

riage  Ceases  to  be  a  Private  Concern — Every  Child  Must  Have 
a  Legal  Father  and  Mother — How  This  Can  be  Effected — The 
Firm  Basis  of  Monogamy — The  Question  of  Marriage  Varia- 
tions— Such  Variations  Not  Inimical  to  Monogamy — The  Most 
Common  Variations — The  Flexibility  of  Marriage  Holds  Varia- 
tions in  Check — Marriage  Variations  versus  Prostitution — Mar- 
riage on  a  Reasonable  and  Humane  Basis — Summary  and  Con- 
clusion      420 


CHAPTER  XL 

The  Art  of  Love. 

Marriage  Not  Only  for  Procreation — Theologians  on  the  Sacra- 
mentum  Solationis — Importance  of  the  Art  of  Love — The  Basis 
of  Stability  in  Marriage  and  the  Condition  for  Right  Procrea- 
tion— The  Art  of  Love  the  Bulwark  Against  Divorce — The  Unity 
of  Love  and  Marriage  a  Principle  of  Modern  Morality — Christian- 
ity and  the  Art  of  Love — Ovid — The  Art  of  Love  Among  Primi- 
tive Peoples — Sexual  Initiation  in  Africa  and  Elsewhere — The 
Tendency  to  Spontaneous  Development  of  the  Art  of  Love  in 
Early  Life — Flirtation — Sexual  Ignorance  in  Women — The  Hus- 
band's Place  in  Sexual  Initiation — Sexual  Ignorance  in  Men — 
The  Husband's  Education  for  Marriage — The  Injury  Done  by  the 
Ignorance  of  Husbands — The  Physical  and  Mental  Results  of 
Unskilful  Coitus — Women  Understand  the  Art  of  Love  Better 
Than  Men — Ancient  and  Modern  Opinions  Concerning  Frequency 
of  Coitus — Variation  in  Sexual  Capacity — The  Sexual  Appetite — 
The  Art  of  Love  Based  on  the  Biological  Facts  of  Courtship — 
The  Art  of  Pleasing  Women — The  Lover  Compared  to  the  Mu- 
sician— The  Proposal  as  a  Part  of  Courtship — Divination  in  the 
Art  of  Love — The  Importance  of  the  Preliminaries  in  Courtship — 
The  Unskilful  Husband  Frequently  the  Cause  of  the  Frigid  Wife 
— The  Difficulty  of  Courtship — Simultaneous  Orgasm — The  Evils 
of  Incomplete  Gratification  in  Women — Coitus  Interruptus — 
Coitus  Reservatus — The  Human  Method  of  Coitus — Variations 
in  Coitus — Posture  in  Coitus — The  Best  Time  for  Coitus — The 
Influence  of  Coitus  in  Marriage — The  Advantages  of  Absence  in 
Marriage — The  Risks  of  Absence — Jealousy — The  Primitive  Func- 
tion of  Jealousy — Its  Predominance  Among  Animals,  Savages, 
etc,  and  in  Pathological  States — An  Anti-Social  Emotion — 
Jealousy  Incompatible  With  the  Progress  of  Civilization — The 
Possibility  of  Loving  More  Than  One  Person  at  a  Time — Platonic 
Friendship— The  Conditions  Which  Make  It  Possible— The  Ma- 


xvi  CONTENTS. 

PAGBJ 

ternal  Element  in  Woman's  Love — The  Final  Development  of 
Conjugal  Love — The  Problem  of  Love  One  of  the  Greatest  Of 
Social  Questions ., .  507 

CHAPTER  XII. 

The  Science  of  Procbeation. 

The  Relationship  of  the  Science  of  Procreation  to  the  Art  of  Love — 
Sexual  Desire  and  Sexual  Pleasure  as  the  Conditions  of  Con- 
ception— Reproduction  Formerly  Left  to  Caprice  and  Lust — The 
Question  of  Procreation  as  a  Religious  Question — The  Creed  of 
Eugenics — Ellen  Key  and  Sir  Francis  Galton — Our  Debt  to  Pos- 
terity— The  Problem  of  Replacing  Natural  Selection — The  Origin 
and  Development  of  Eugenics — The  General  Acceptance  of  Eu- 
genical  Principles  To-day — The  Two  Channels  by  Which  Eugenical 
Principles  are  Becoming  Embodied  in  Practice — The  Sense  of 
Sexual  Responsibility  in  Women — The  Rejection  of  Compulsory 
Motherhood — The  Privilege  of  Voluntary  Motherhood — Causes  of 
the  Degradation  of  Motherhood — The  Control  of  Conception — Now 
Practiced  by  the  Majority  of  the  Population  in  Civilized  Coun- 
tries— The  Fallacy  of  "Racial  Suicide" — Are  Large  Families  a 
Stigma  of  Degeneration  ?— Procreative  Control  the  Outcome  of 
Natural  and  Civilized  Progress — The  Growth  of  Neo-Malthusian 
Beliefs  and  Practices — Facultative  Sterility  as  Distinct  from 
Neo-Malthusianism — The  Medical  and  Hygienic  Necessity  of 
Control  of  Conception — Preventive  Methods — Abartton — The 
New  Doctrine  of  the  Duty  to  Practice  Abortion — How  Far  is  this 
Justifiable? — Castration  as  a  Method  of  Controlling  Procreation 
— Negative  Eugenics  and  Positive  Eugenics — The  Question  of  Cer- 
tificates for  Marriage — The  Inadequacy  of  Eugenics  by  Act  of 
Parliament — The  Quickening  of  the  Social  Conscience  in  Regard 
to  Heredity — Limitations  to  the  Endowment  of  Motherhood — 
The  Conditions  Favorable  to  Procreation — Sterility — The  Ques- 
tion of  Artificial  Fecundation — The  Best  Age  of  Procreation — 
The  Question  of  Early  Motherhood — The  Best  Time  for  Pro- 
creation— The  Completion  of  the  Divine  Cycle  of  Life 576 


CHAPTER  I. 
THE  MOTHER  AND  HER  CHILD. 

The  Child's  Right  to  Choose  Its  Ancestry— How  This  is  Effected— 
The  Mother  the  Child's  Supreme  Parent — Motherhood  and  the  Woman 
Movement — The  Immense  Importance  of  Motherhood — Infant  Mortality 
and  Its  Causes — The  Chief  Cause  in  the  Mother — The  Need  of  Rest 
During  Pregnancy — Frequency  of  Premature  Birth — The  Function  of 
the  State — Recent  Advance  in  Puericulture — The  Question  of  Coitus 
During  Pregnancy — The  Need  of  Rest  During  Lactation — The  Mother's 
Duty  to  Suckle  Her  Child — The  Economic  Question — The  Duty  of  the 
State — Recent  Progress  in  the  Protection  of  the  Mother — The  Fallacy 
of  State  Nurseries. 

A  man's  sexual  nature,  like  all  else  that  is  most  essential 
in  him,  is  rooted  in  a  soil  that  was  formed  very  long  before  his 
birth.  In  this,  as  in  every  other  respect,  he  draws  the  elements 
of  his  life  from  his  ancestors,  however  new  the  recombination 
may  be  and  however  greatly  it  may  be  modified  by  subsequent 
conditions.  A  man's  destiny  stands  not  in  the  future  but  in  the 
past.  That,  rightly  considered,  is  the  most  vital  of  all  vital 
facts.  Every  child  thus  has  a  right  to  choose  his  own  ancestors. 
Naturally  he  can  only  do  this  vicariously,  through  his  parents. 
It  is  the  most  serious  and  sacred  duty  of  the  future  father  to 
choose  one  half  of  the  ancestral  and  hereditary  character  of  his 
future  child;  it  is  the  most  serious  and  sacred  duty  of  the 
future  mother  to  make  a  similar  choice.1  In  choosing  each 
other  they  have  between  them  chosen  the  whole  ancestry  of  their 
child.     They  have  determined  the  stars  that  will  rule  his  fate. 

In  the  past  that  fateful  determination  has  usually  been 
made  helplessly,  ignorantly,  almost  unconsciously.     It  has  either 


1  It  is  not,  of  course,  always  literally  true  that  each  parent  sup- 
plies exactly  half  the  heredity,  for,  as  we  see  among  animals  generally, 
the  offspring  may  sometimes  approach  more  nearly  to  one  parent,  some- 
times to  the  other,  while  among  plants,  as  De  Vries  and  others  have 
shown,  the  heredity  may  be  still  more  unequally  divided. 

(1) 


2  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

been  guided  by  an  instinct  which,  on  the  whole,  has  worked  out 
fairly  well,  or  controlled  by  economic  interests  of  the  results  of 
which  so  much  cannot  be  said,  or  left  to  the  risks  of  lower  than 
bestial  chances  which  can  produce  nothing  but  evil.  In  the 
future  we  cannot  but  have  faith — for  all  the  hope  of  humanity 
must  rest  on  that  faith — that  a  new  guiding  impulse,  reinforcing 
natural  instinct  and  becoming  in  time  an  inseparable  accom- 
paniment of  it,  will  lead  civilized  man  on  his  racial  course.  Just 
as  in  the  past  the  race  has,  on  the  whole,  been  moulded  by  a 
natural,  and  in  part  sexual,  selection,  that  was  unconscious  of 
itself  and  ignorant  of  the  ends  it  made  towards,  so  in  the  future 
the  race  will  be  moulded  by  deliberate  selection,  the  creative 
energy  of  Nature  becoming  self-conscious  in  the  civilized  brain 
of  man.  This  is  not  a  faith  which  has  its  source  in  a  vague 
hope.  The  problems  of  the  individual  life  are  linked  on  to  the 
fate  of  the  racial  life,  and  again  and  again  we  shall  find  as  we 
ponder  the  individual  questions  we  are  here  concerned  with,  that 
at  all  points  they  ultimately  converge  towards  this  same  racial 
end. 

Since  we  have  here,  therefore,  to  follow  out  the  sexual 
relationships  of  the  individual  as  they  bear  on  society,  it  will 
be  convenient  at  this  point  to  put  aside  the  questions  of  ancestry 
and  to  accept  the  individual  as,  with  hereditary  constitution 
already  determined,  he  lies  in  his  mother's  womb. 

It  is  the  mother  who  is  the  child's  supreme  parent.  At 
various  points  in  zoological  evolution  it  has  seemed  possible  that 
the  functions  that  we  now  know  as  those  of  maternity  would  be 
largely  and  even  equally  shared  by  the  male  parent.  Nature  has 
tried  various  experiments  in  this  direction,  among  the  fishes,  for 
instance,  and  even  among  birds.  But  reasonable  and  excellent 
as  these  experiments  were,  and  though  they  were  sufficiently  sound 
to  secure  their  perpetuation  unto  this  day,  it  remains  true  that  it 
was  not  along  these  lines  that  Man  was  destined  to  emerge. 
Among  all  the  mammal  predecessors  of  Man,  the  male  is  an 
imposing  and  important  figure  in  the  early  days  of  courtship, 
but  after  conception  has  once  been  secured  the  mother  plays  the 
chief  part  in  the  racial  life.     The  male  must  be  content  to  forage 


THE    MOTHER   AND    HER    CHILD.  6 

abroad  and  stand  on  guard  when  at  home  in  the  ante-chamber  of 
the  family.  When  she  has  once  been  impregnated  the  female 
animal  angrily  rejects  the  caresses  she  had  welcomed  so  coquet- 
tishly  before,  and  even  in  Man  the  place  of  the  father  at  the  birth 
of  his  child  is  not  a  notably  dignified  or  comfortable  one. 
Nature  accords  the  male  but  a  secondary  and  comparatively 
humble  place  in  the  home,  the  breeding-place  of  the  race ;  he  may 
compensate  himself  if  he  will,  by  seeking  adventure  and  renown 
in  the  world  outside.  The  mother  is  the  child's  supreme  parent, 
and  during  the  period  from  conception  to  birth  the  hygiene 
of  the  future  man  can  only  be  affected  by  influences  which  work 
through  her. 

Fundamental  and  elementary  as  is  the  fact  of  the  pre- 
dominant position  of  the  mother  in  relation  to  the  life  of  the 
race,  incontestable  as  it  must  seem  to  all  those  who  have 
traversed  the  volumes  of  these  Studies  up  to  the  present  point, 
it  must  be  admitted  that  it  has  sometimes  been  forgotten  or 
ignored.  In  the  great  ages  of  humanity  it  has  indeed  been 
accepted  as  a  central  and  sacred  fact.  In  classic  Eome  at  one 
period  the  house  of  the  pregnant  woman  was  adorned  with 
garlands,  and  in  Athens  it  was  an  inviolable  sanctuary  where 
even  the  criminal  might  find  shelter.  Even  amid  the  mixed 
influences  of  the  exuberantly  vital  times  which  preceded  the 
outburst  of  the  Benaissance,  the  ideally  beautiful  woman,  as 
pictures  still  show,  was  the  pregnant  woman.  But  it  has  not 
always  been  so.  At  the  present  time,  for  instance,  there  can  be 
no  doubt  that  we  are  but  beginning  to  emerge  from  a  period 
during  which  this  fact  was  often  disputed  and  denied,  both  in 
theory  and  in  practice,  even  by  women  themselves.  This  was 
notably  the  case  both  in  England  and  America,  and  it  is  probably 
owing  in  large  part  to  the  unfortunate  infatuation  which  led 
women  in  these  lands  to  follow  after  masculine  ideals  that  at  the 
present  moment  the  inspirations  of  progress  in  women's  move- 
ments eome  mainly  to-day  from  the  women  of  other  lands. 
Motherhood  and  the  future  of  the  race  were  systematically 
belittled.  Paternity  is  but  a  mere  incident,  it  was  argued,  in 
man's  life :  why  should  maternity  be  more  than  a  mere  incident 


4  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

in  woman's  life  ?  In  England,  by  a  curiously  perverted  form  of 
sexual  attraction,  women  were  so  fascinated  by  the  glamour  that 
surrounded  men  that  they  desired  to  suppress  or  forget  all  the 
facts  of  organic  constitution  which  made  them  unlike  men, 
counting  their  glory  as  their  shame,  and  sought  the  same  educa- 
tion as  men,  the  same  occupations  as  men,  even  the  same  sports. 
As  we  know,  there  was  at  the  origin  an  element  of  Tightness  in 
this  impulse.1  It  was  absolutely  right  in  so  far  as  it  was  a  claim 
for  freedom  from  artificial  restriction,  and  a  demand  for 
economic  independence.  But  it  became  mischievous  and  absurd 
when  it  developed  into  a  passion  for  doing,  in  all  respects,  the 
same  things  as  men  do ;  how  mischievous  and  how  absurd  we  may 
realize  if  we  imagine  men  developing  a  passion  to  imitate  the 
ways  and  avocations  of  women.  Freedom  is  only  good  when  it 
is  a  freedom  to  follow  the  laws  of  one's  own  nature;  it  ceases 
to  be  freedom  when  it  becomes  a  slavish  attempt  to  imitate 
others,  and  would  be  disastrous  if  it  could  be  successful.2 

At  the  present  day  this  movement  on  the  theoretical  side  has 
ceased  to  possess  any  representatives  who  exert  serious  influence. 
Yet  its  practical  results  are  still  prominently  exhibited  in  Eng- 
land and  the  other  countries  in  which  it  has  been  felt.  Infantile 
mortality  is  enormous,  and  in  England  at  all  events  is  only 
beginning  to  show  a  tendency  to  diminish ;  motherhood  is  with- 
out dignity,  and  the  vitality  of  mothers  is  speedily  crushed,  so 


1  It  should  scarcely  be  necessary  to  say  that  to  assert  that  mother- 
hood is  a  woman's  supreme  function  is  by  no  means  to  assert  that  her 
activities  should  be  confined  to  the  home.  That  is  an  opinion  which 
may  now  be  regarded  as  almost  extinct  even  among  those  who  most 
glorify  the  function  of  woman  as  mother.  As  Friedrich  Kallmann  and 
others  have  very  truly  pointed  out,  a  woman  is  not  adequately  equipped 
to  fulfil  her  functions  as  mother  and  trainer  of  children  unless  she  has 
lived  in  the  world  and  exercised  a  vocation. 

2  "Were  the  capacities  of  the  brain  and  the  heart  equal  in  the 
sexes,"  Lily  Braun  {Die  Frauenfrage,  page  207)  well  says,  "the  entry 
of  women  into  public  life  would  be  of  no  value  to  humanity,  and  would 
even  lead  to  a  still  wilder  competition.  Only  the  recognition  that  the 
entire  nature  of  woman  is  different  from  that  of  man,  that  it  signifies 
a  new  vivifying  principle  in  human  life,  makes  the  women's  movement, 
in  spite  of  the  misconception  of  its  enemies  and  its  friends,  a  social 
revolution"  (see  also  Havelock  Ellis,  Man  and  Woman,  fourth  edition, 
1904,  especially  Ch.  XVIII). 


THE   MOTHER   AND   HER   CHILD.  O 

that  often  they  cannot  so  much  as  suckle  their  infants ;  ignorant 
girl-mothers  give  their  infants  potatoes  and  gin;  on  every  hand 
we  are  told  of  the  evidence  of  degeneracy  in  the  race,  or  if  not  in 
the  race,  at  all  events,  in  the  young  individuals  of  to-day. 

It  would  be  out  of  place,  and  would  lead  us  too  far,  to  discuss 
here  these  various  practical  outcomes  of  the  foolish  attempt  to  belittle 
the  immense  racial  importance  of  motherhood.  It  is  enough  here  to 
touch  on  the  one  point  of  the  excess  of  infantile  mortality. 

In  England — which  is  not  from  the  social  point  of  view  in  a  very 
much  worse  condition  than  most  countries,  for  in  Austria  and  Russia 
the  infant  mortality  is  higher  still,  though  in  Australia  and  New  Zea- 
land much  lower,  but  still  excessive — more  than  one-fourth  of  the  total 
number  of  deaths  every  year  is  of  infants  under  one  year  of  age.  In 
the  opinion  of  medical  officers  of  health  who  are  in  the  best  position  to 
form  an  opinion,  about  one-half  of  this  mortality,  roughly  speaking,  is 
absolutely  preventable.  Moreover,  it  is  doubtful  whether  there  is  any 
real  movement  of  decrease  in  this  mortality;  during  the  past  half  cen- 
tury it  has  sometimes  slightly  risen  and  sometimes  slightly  fallen,  and 
though  during  the  past  few  years  the  general  movement  of  mortality  for 
children  under  five  in  England  and  Wales  has  shown  a  tendency  to 
decrease,  in  London  (according  to  J.  F.  J.  Sykes,  although  Sir  Shirley 
Murphy  has  attempted  to  minimize  the  significance  of  these  figures) 
the  infantile  mortality  rate  for  the  first  three  months  of  life  actually 
rose  from  69  per  1,000  in  the  period  1888-1892  to  75  per  1,000  in  the 
period  1898-1901.  (This  refers,  it  must  be  remembered,  to  the  period 
before  the  introduction  of  the  Notification  of  Births  Act.)  In  any  case, 
although  the  general  mortality  shows  a  marked  tendency  to  improve- 
ment there  is  certainly  no  adequately  corresponding  improvement  in  the 
infantile  mortality.  This  is  scarcely  surprising,  when  we  realize  that 
there  has  been  no  change  for  the  better,  but  rather  for  the  worse,  in  the 
conditions  under  which  our  infants  are  born  and  reared.  Thus  William 
Hall,  who  has  had  an  intimate  knowledge  extending  over  fifty-six  years 
of  the  slums  of  Leeds,  and  has  weighed  and  measured  many  thousands 
of  slum  children,  besides  examining  over  120,000  boys  and  girls  as  to 
their  fitness  for  factory  labor,  states  (British  Medical  Journal,  October 
14,  1905)  that  "fifty  years  ago  the  slum  mother  was  much  more  sober, 
cleanly,  domestic,  and  motherly  than  she  is  to-day;  she  was  herself 
better  nourished  and  she  almost  always  suckled  her  children,  and  after 
weaning  they  received  more  nutritious  bone-making  food,  and  she  was 
able  to  prepare  more  wholesome  food  at  home."  The  system  of  com- 
pulsory education  has  had  an  unfortunate  influence  in  exerting  a  strain 
on  the  parents  and  worsening  the  conditions  of  the  home.     For,  excellent 


6  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

as  education  is  in  itself,  it  is  not  the  primary  need  of  life,  and  has  been 
made  compulsory  before  the  more  essential  things  of  life  have  been  made 
equally  compulsory.  How  absolutely  unnecessary  this  great  mortality 
is  may  be  shown,  without  evoking  the  good  example  of  Australia  and 
New  Zealand,  by  merely  comparing  small  English  towns;  thus  while 
in  Guildford  the  infantile  death  rate  is  65  per  thousand,  in  Burslem  it 
is  205  per  thousand. 

It  is  sometimes  said  that  infantile  mortality  is  an  economic  ques- 
tion, and  that  with  improvement  in  wages  it  would  cease.  This  is  only 
true  to  a  limited  extent  and  under  certain  conditions.  In  Australia 
there  is  no  grinding  poverty,  but  the  deaths  of  infants  under  one  year 
of  age  are  still  between  80  and  90  per  thousand,  and  one-third  of  this 
mortality,  according  to  Hooper  (British  Medical  Journal,  1908,  vol.  ii, 
p.  289),  being  due  to  the  ignorance  of  mothers  and  the  dislike  to  suck- 
ling, is  easily  preventable.  The  employment  of  married  women  greatly 
diminishes  the  poverty  of  a  family,  but  nothing  can  be  worse  for  the 
welfare  of  the  woman  as  mother,  or  for  the  welfare  of  her  child.  Reid, 
the  medical  officer  of  health  for  Staffordshire,  where  there  are  two  large 
centres  of  artisan  population  with  identical  health  conditions,  has  shown 
that  in  the  northern  centre,  where  a  very  large  number  of  women  are 
engaged  in  factories,  still-births  are  three  times  as  frequent  as  in  the 
southern  centre,  where  there  are  practically  no  trade  employments  for 
women;  the  frequency  of  abnormalities  is  also  in  the  same  ratio.  The 
superiority  of  Jewish  over  Christian  children,  again,  and  their  lower 
infantile  mortality,  seem  to  be  entirely  due  to  the  fact  that  Jewesses 
are  better  mothers.  "The  Jewish  children  in  the  slums,"  says  William 
Hall  (British,  Medical  Journal,  October  14,  1905),  speaking  from  wide 
and  accurate  knowledge,  "were  superior  in  weight,  in  teeth,  and  in  gen- 
eral bodily  development,  and  they  seemed  less  susceptible  to  infectious 
disease.  Yet  these  Jews  were  overcrowded,  they  took  little  exercise,  and 
their  unsanitary  environment  was  obvious.  The  fact  was,  their  chil- 
dren were  much  better  nourished.  The  pregnant  Jewess  was  more  cared 
for,  and  no  doubt  supplied  better  nutriment  to  the  foetus.  After  the 
children  were  born  90  per  cent,  received  breast-milk,  and  during  later 
childhood  they  were  abundantly  fed  on  bone-making  material ;  eggs  and 
oil,  fish,  fresh  vegetables,  and  fruit  entered  largely  into  their  diet." 
G.  Newman,  in  his  important  and  comprehensive  book  on  Infant  Mor- 
tality, emphasizes  the  conclusion  that  "first  of  all  we  need  a  higher 
standard  of  physical  motherhood."  The  problem  of  infantile  mortality, 
he  declares  (page  259),  is  not  one  of  sanitation  alone,  or  housing,  or 
indeed  of  poverty  as  such,  "but  is  mainly  a  question  of  motherhood." 

The  fundamental  need  of  the  pregnant  woman  is  rest. 
Without  a  large  degree  of  maternal  rest  there  can  be  no  pueri- 


THE   MOTHER   AND   HER   CHILD.  7 

culture.1  The  task  of  creating  a  man  needs  the  whole  of  a 
woman's  best  energies,  more  especially  during  the  three  months 
before  birth.  It  cannot  be  subordinated  to  the  tax  on  strength 
involved. by  manual  or  mental  labor,  or  even  strenuous  social 
duties  and  amusements.  The  numerous  experiments  and  obser- 
vations which  have  been  made  during  recent  years  in  Maternity 
Hospitals,  more  especially  in  France,  have  shown  conclusively 
that  not  only  the  present  and  future  well-being  of  the  mother  and 
the  ease  of  her  confinement,  but  the  fate  of  the  child,  are 
immensely  influenced  by  rest  during  the  last  month  of  preg- 
nancy. "Every  working  woman  is  entitled  to  rest  during  the  last 
three  months  of  her  pregnancy."  This  formula  was  adopted  by 
the  International  Congress  of  Hygiene  in  1900,  but  it  cannot  be 
practically  carried  out  except  by  the  cooperation  of  the  whole 
community.  For  it  is  not  enough  to  say  that  a  woman  ought 
to  rest  during  pregnancy ;  it  is  the  business  of  the  community  to 
ensure  that  that  rest  is  duly  secured.  The  woman  herself,  and 
her  employer,  we  may  be  certain,  will  do  their  best  to  cheat  the 
community,  but  it  is  the  community  which  suffers,  both 
economically  and  morally,  when  a  woman  casts  her  inferior 
children  into  the  world,  and  in  its  own  interests  the  community 
is  forced  to  control  both  employer  and  employed.  We  can  no 
longer  allow  it  to  be  said,  in  Bouchacourt's  words,  that  "to-day 
the  dregs  of  the  human  species — the  blind,  the  deaf-mute,  the 
degenerate,  the  nervous,  the  vicious,  the  idiotic,  the  imbecile,  the 
cretins  and  epileptics — are  better  protected  than  pregnant 
women."2 

Pinard,  who  must  always  be  honored  as  one  of  the  founders  of 
eugenics,  has,  together  with  his  pupils,  done  much  to  prepare  the  way 


1  The  word  "puericulture"  was  invented  by  Dr.  Caron  in  1866  to 
signify  the  culture  of  children  after  birth.  It  was  Pinard,  the  distin- 
guished French  obstetrician,  who,  in  1895,  gave  it  a  larger  and  truer 
significance  by  applying  it  to  include  the  culture  of  children  before  birth. 
It  is  now  defined  as  "the  science  which  has  for  its  end  the  search  for 
the  knowledge  relative  to  the  reproduction,  the  preservation,  and  the 
amelioration  of  the  human  race"  (Pgehin,  La  Puericulture  avant  la 
Naissance,  Th§se  de  Paris,  1908). 

2  In  La  Cfrossesse  (pp.  450  et  seq.)  Bouchacourt  has  discussed  the 
problems  of  puericulture  at  some  length. 


8  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

for  the  acceptance  of  this  simple  but  important  principle  by  making  clear 
the  grounds  on  which  it  is  based.  From  prolonged  observations  on  the 
pregnant  women  of  all  classes  Pinard  has  shown  conclusively  that  women 
who  rest  during  pregnancy  have  finer  children  than  women  who  do  not 
rest.  Apart  from  the  more  general  evils  of  work  during  pregnancy, 
Pinard  found  that  during  the  later  months  it  had  a  tendency  to  press 
the  uterus  down  into  the  pelvis,  and  so  cause  the  premature  birth  of 
undeveloped  children,  while  labor  was  rendered  more  difficult  and  dan- 
gerous (see,  e.g.,  Pinard,  Gazette  des  Eopitaux,  Nov.  28,  1895,  Id., 
Annates  de  Gynecologie,  Aug.,  1898). 

Letourneux  has  studied  the  question  whether  repose  during  preg- 
nancy is  necessary  for  women  whose  professional  work  is  only  slightly 
fatiguing.  He  investigated  732  successive  confinements  at  the  Clinique 
Baudelocque  in  Paris.  He  found  that  137  women  engaged  in  fatiguing 
occupations  (servants,  cooks,  etc.)  and  not  resting  during  pregnancy, 
produced  children  with  an  average  weight  of  3,081  grammes;  115  women 
engaged  in  only  slightly  fatiguing  occupations  (dressmakers,  milliners, 
etc.)  and  also  not  resting  during  pregnancy,  had  children  with  an  aver- 
age weight  of  3,130  grammes,  a  slight  but  significant  difference,  in  view 
of  the  fact  that  the  women  of  the  first  group  were  large  and  robust, 
while  those  of  the  second  group  were  of  slight  and  elegant  build.  Again, 
comparing  groups  of  women  who  rested  during  pregnancy,  it  was  found 
that  the  women  accustomed  to  fatiguing  work  had  children  with  an 
average  weight  of  3,319  grammes,  while  those  accustomed  to  less 
fatiguing  work  had  children  with  an  average  weight  of  3,318  grammes. 
The  difference  between  repose  and  non-repose  is  thus  considerable,  while 
it  also  enables  robust  women  exercising  a  fatiguing  occupation  to  catch 
up,  though  not  to  surpass,  the  frailer  women  exercising  a  less  fatiguing 
occupation.  We  see,  too,  that  even  in  the  comparatively  unfatiguing 
occupations  of  milliners,  etc.,  rest  during  pregnancy  still  remains 
important,  and  cannot  safely  be  dispensed  with.  "Society,"  Letourneux 
concludes,  "must  guarantee  rest  to  women  not  well  off  during  a  part 
of  pregnancy.  It  will  be  repaid  the  cost  of  doing  so  by  the  increased 
vigor  of  the  children  thus  produced"  (Letourneux,  De  V Influence  de  la 
Profession  de  la  Mere  sur  le  Poids  de  V Enfant,  These  de  Paris,  1897). 

Dr.  Dweira-Bernson  (Revue  Pratique  d'Odstetrique  et  de  Pediatrie, 
1903,  p.  370),  compared  four  groups  of  pregnant  women  (servants  with 
light  work,  servants  with  heavy  work,  farm  girls,  dressmakers)  who 
rested  for  three  months  before  confinement  with  four  groups  similarly 
composed  who  took  no  rest  before  confinement.  In  every  group  he  found 
that  the  difference  in  the  average  weight  of  the  child  was  markedly  in 
favor  of  the  women  who  rested,  and  it  was  notable  that  the  greatest 
difference  was  found  in  the  case  of  the  farm  girls  who  were  probably  the 
most  robust  and  also  the  hardest  worked. 


THE    MOTHER    AND    HER    CHILD.  9 

The  usual  time  of  gestation  ranges  between  274  and  280  days  (or 
280  to  290  days  from  the  last  menstrual  period),  and  occasionally  a  few- 
days  longer,  though  there  is  dispute  as  to  the  length  of  the  extreme 
limit,  which  some  authorities  would  extend  to  300  days,  or  even  to  320 
days  (Pinard,  in  Kichet's  Dictionnaire  de  Physiologie,  vol.  vii,  pp.  150- 
162;  Taylor,  Medical  Jurisprudence,  fifth  edition,  pp.  44,  98  et  seq.; 
L.  M.  Allen,  "Prolonged  Gestation,"  American  Journal  Obstetrics,  April, 
1907).  It  is  possible,  as  Miiller  suggested  in  1898  in  a  These  de  Nancy, 
that  civilization  tends  to  shorten  the  period  of  gestation,  and  that  in 
earlier  ages  it  was  longer  than  it  is  now.  Such  a  tendency  to  prema- 
ture birth  under  the  exciting  nervous  influences  of  civilization  would 
thus  correspond,  as  Bouchacourt  has  pointed  out  (  La  Grossesse,  p.  113), 
to  the  similar  effect  of  domestication  in  animals.  The  robust  country- 
woman becomes  transformed  into  the  more  graceful,  but  also  more  fragile, 
town  woman  who  needs  a  degree  of  care  and  hygiene  which  the  country- 
woman with  her  niore  resistant  nervous  system  can  to  some  extent  dis- 
pense with,  although  even  she,  as  we  see,  suffers  in  the  person  of  her 
child,  and  probably  in  her  own  person,  from  the  effects  of  work  during 
pregnancy.  The  serious  nature  of  this  civilized  tendency  to  premature 
birth — of  which  lack  of  rest  in  pregnancy  is,  however,  only  one  of  sev- 
eral important  causes — is  shown  by  the  fact  that  Seropian  (Frequence 
Comparee  des  Causes  de  V Accouchement  Premature,  These  de  Paris, 
1907)  found  that  about  one-third  of  French  births  (32.28  per  cent.)  are 
to  a  greater  or  less  extent  premature.  Pregnancy  is  not  a  morbid  con- 
dition; on  the  contrary,  a  pregnant  woman  is  at  the  climax  of  her  most 
normal  physiological  life,  but  owing  to  the  tension  thus  involved  she  is 
specially  liable  to  suffer  from  any  slight  shock  or  strain. 

It  must  be  remarked  that  the  increased  tendency  to  premature 
birth,  while  in  part  it  may  be  due  to  general  tendencies  of  civilization, 
is  also  in  part  due  to  very  definite  and  preventable  causes.  Syphilis, 
alcoholism,  and  attempts  to  produce  abortion  are  among  the  not  uncom- 
mon causes  of  premature  birth  (see,  e.g.,  G.  F.  McCleary,  "The  Influ- 
ence of  Antenatal  Conditions  on  Infantile  Mortality,"  British  Medical 
Journal,  Aug.  13,  1904). 

Premature  birth  ought  to  be  avoided,  because  the  child  born  too 
early  is  insufficiently  equipped  for  the  task  before  him.  Astengo,  deal- 
ing with  nearly  19,000  cases  at  the  Lariboisiere  Hospital  in  Paris  and 
the  Maternite,  found,  that  reckoning  from  the  date  of  the  last  menstrua- 
tion, there  is  a  direct  relation  between  the  weight  of  the  infant  at  birth 
and  the  length  of  the  pregnancy.  The  longer  the  pregnancy,  the  finer 
the  child  (Astengo,  Rapport  du  Poids  des  Enfants  a  la  Duree  de  la 
Grossesse,  These  de  Paris,  1905). 

The  frequency  of  premature  birth  is  probably  as  great  in  England 
as  in  France.     Ballantyne  states  (Manual  of  Antenatal  Pathology;  The 


10  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

Foetus,  p.  456)  that  for  practical  purposes  the  frequency  of  premature 
labors  in  maternity  hospitals  may  be  put  at  20  per  cent.,  but  that  if 
all  infants  weighing  less  than  3,000  grammes  are  to  be  regarded  as 
premature,  it  rises  to  41.5  per  cent.  That  premature  birth  is  increasing 
in  England  seems  to  be  indicated  by  the  fact  that  during  the  past 
twenty-five  years  there  has  been  a  steady  rise  in  the  mortality  rate  from 
premature  birth.  McCleary,  who  discusses  this  point  and  considers  the 
increase  real,  concludes  that  "it  would  appear  that  there  has  been  a 
diminution  in  the  quality  as  well  as  in  the  quantity  of  our  output  of 
babies"  (see  also  a  discussion,  introduced  by  Dawson  Williams,  on 
"Physical  Deterioration,"  British  Medical  Journal,  Oct.  14,  1905). 

It  need  scarcely  be  pointed  out  that  not  only  is  immaturity  a 
cause  of  deterioration  in  the  infants  that  survive,  but  that  it  alone 
serves  enormously  to  decrease  the  number  of  infants  that  are  able  to 
survive.  Thus  G.  Newman  states  (loc.  cit.)  that  in  most  large  English 
urban  districts  immaturity  is  the  chief  cause  of  infant  mortality,  fur- 
nishing about  30  per  cent,  of  the  infant  deaths;  even  in  London  (Isling- 
ton) Alfred  Harris  (British  Medical  Journal,  Dec.  14,  1907)  finds  that 
it  is  responsible  for  nearly  17  per  cent,  of  the  infantile  deaths.  It  is 
estimated  by  Newman  that  about  half  of  the  mothers  of  infants  dying 
of  immaturity  suffer  from  marked  ill-health  and  poor  physique;  they 
are  not,  therefore,  fitted  to  be  mothers. 

Rest  during  pregnancy  is  a  very  powerful  agent  in  preventing  pre- 
mature birth.  Thus  Dr.  Sarraute-Lourie  has  compared  1,550  pregnant 
women  at  the  Asile  Michelet  who  rested  before  confinement  with  1,550 
women  confined  at  the  Hopital  Lariboisiere  who  had  enjoyed  no  such 
period  of  rest.  She  found  that  the  average  duration  of  pregnancy  was 
at  least  twenty  days  shorter  in  the  latter  group  (Mme.  Sarraute-Lourie, 
De  V Influence  du  Repos  sur  la  Duree  de  la  Gestation,  These  de  Paris, 
1899). 

Leyboff  has  insisted  on  the  absolute  necessity  of  rest  during  preg- 
nancy, as  well  for  the  sake  of  the  woman  herself  as  the  burden  she 
carries,  and  shows  the  evil  results  which  follow  when  rest  is  neglected. 
Railway  traveling,  horse-riding,  bicycling,  and  sea-voyages  are  also,  Ley- 
boff believes,  liable  to  be  injurious  to  the  course  of  pregnancy.  Leyboff 
recognizes  the  difficulties  which  procreating  women  are  placed  under  by 
present  industrial  conditions,  and  concludes  that  "it  is  urgently  neces- 
sary to  prevent  women,  by  law,  from  working  during  the  last  three 
months  of  pregnancy;  that  in  every  district  there  should  be  a  maternity 
fund;  that  during  this  enforced  rest  a  woman  should  receive  the  same 
salary  as  during  work."  He  adds  that  the  children  of  unmarried 
mothers  should  be  cared  for  by  the  State,  that  there  should  be  an  eight- 
hours'  day  for  all  workers,  and  that  no  children  under  sixteen  should  be 
allowed  to  work  (E.  Leyboff,  L'Hygiene  de  la  Grossesse,  Th§se  de  Paris, 
1905). 


THE   MOTHER   AND   HER   CHILD.  11 

Perruc  states  that  at  least  two  months'  rest  before  confinement 
should  be  made  compulsory,  and  that  during  this  period  the  woman 
should  receive  an  indemnity  regulated  by  the  State.  He  is  of  opinion 
that  it  should  take  the  form  of  compulsory  assurance,  to  which  the 
worker,  the  employer,  and  the  State  alike  contributed  (Perruc,  Assist- 
ance aux  Femmes  Enceintes,  These  de  Paris,  1905 ) . 

It  is  probable  that  during  the  earlier  months  of  pregnancy,  work, 
if  not  excessively  heavy  and  exhausting,  has  little  or  no  bad  effect;  thus 
Bacchimont  (Documents  pour  servir  a  VHistoire  de  la  Puericuliure 
Intra-uterine,  These  de  Paris,  1898)  found  that,  while  there  was  a  great 
gain  in  the  weight  of  children  of  mothers  who  had  rested  for  three 
months,  there  was  no  corresponding  gain  in  the  children  of  those 
mothers  who  had  rested  for  longer  periods.  It  is  during  the  last  three 
months  that  freedom,  repose,  the  cessation  of  the  obligatory  routine  of 
employment  become  necessary.  This  is  the  opinion  of  Pinard,  the  chief 
authority  on  this  matter.  Many,  however,  fearing  that  economic  and 
industrial  conditions  render  so  long  a  period  of  rest  too  difficult  of  prac- 
tical attainment,  are,  with  Clappier  and  G.  Newman,  content  to  demand 
two  months  as  a  minimum;  Salvat  only  asks  for  one  month's  rest 
before  confinement,  the  woman,  whether  married  or  not,  receiving  a 
pecuniary  indemnity  during  this  period,  with  medical  care  and  drugs 
free.  Ballantyne  (Manual  of  Antenatal  Pathology:  The  Foetus,  p.  475), 
as  well  as  Niven,  also  asks  only  for  one  month's  compulsory  rest  during 
pregnancy,  with  indemnity.  Arthur  Helme,  however,  taking  a  more  com- 
prehensive view  of  all  the  factors  involved,  concludes  in  a  valuable  paper 
on  "The  Unborn  Child:  Its  Care  and  Its  Rights"  (British  Medical 
Journal,  Aug.  24,  1907),  "The  important  thing  would  be  to  prohibit 
pregnant  women  from  going  to  work  at  all,  and  it  is  as  important  from 
the  standpoint  of  the  child  that  this  prohibition  should  include  the  early 
as  the  late  months  of  pregnancy." 

In  England  little  progress  has  yet  been  made  as  regards  this  ques- 
tion of  rest  during  pregnancy,  even  as  regards  the  education  of  public 
opinion.  Sir  William  Sinclair,  Professor  of  Obstetrics  at  the  Victoria 
University  of  Manchester,  has  published  (1907)  A  Plea  for  Establish- 
ing Municipal  Maternity  Homes.  Ballantyne,  a  great  British  authority 
on  the  embryology  of  the  child,  has  published  a  "Plea  for  a  Pre-Matern- 
ity  Hospital"  (British  Medical  Journal,  April  6,  1901),  has  since  given 
an  important  lecture  on  the  subject  (British  Medi-cal  Journal,  Jan.  11, 
1908 ) ,  and  has  further  discussed  the  matter  in  his  Manual  of  Ante-Natal 
Pathology :  The  Foetus  (Ch.  XXVII)  ;  he  is,  however,  more  interested  in 
the  establishment  of  hospitals  for  the  diseases  of  pregnancy  than  in  the 
wider  and  more  fundamental  question  of  rest  for  all  pregnant  women. 
In  England  there  are,  indeed,  a  few  institutions  which  receive  unmar- 
ried women,  with  a  record  of  good  conduct,  who  are  pregnant  for  the 


12  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

first  time,  for,  as  Bouchacourt  remarks,  ancient  British  prejudices  are 
opposed  to  any  mercy  being  shown  to  women  who  are  recidivists  in 
committing  the  crime  of  conception. 

At  present,  indeed,  it  is  only  in  France  that  the  urgent  need  of 
rest  during  the  latter  months  of  pregnancy  has  been  clearly  realized,  and 
any  serious  and  official  attempts  made  to  provide  for  it.  In  an  interest- 
ing Paris  thesis  (De  la  Puericulture  avant  le  Naissance,  1907)  Clappier 
has  brought  together  much  information  bearing  on  the  efforts  now  being 
made  to  deal  practically  with  this  question.  There  are  many  Asiles  in 
Paris  for  pregnant  women.  One  of  the  best  is  the  Asile  Miehelet, 
founded  in  1893  by  the  Assistance  Publique  de  Paris.  This  is  a  sana- 
torium for  pregnant  women  who  have  reached  a  period  of  seven  and  a 
half  months.  It  is  nominally  restricted  to  the  admission  of  French 
women  who  have  been  domiciled  for  a  year  in  Paris,  but,  in  practice,  it 
appears  that  women  from  all  parts  of  France  are  received.  They  are 
employed  in  light  and  occasional  work  for  the  institution,  being  paid 
for  this  work,  and  are  also  occupied  in  making  clothes  for  the  expected 
baby.  Married  and  unmarried  women  are  admitted  alike,  all  women 
being  equal  from  the  point  of  view  of  motherhood,  and  indeed  the 
majority  of  the  women  who  come  to  the  Asile  Miehelet  are  unmarried, 
some  being  girls  who  have  even  trudged  on  foot  from  Brittany  and  other 
remote  parts  of  France,  to  seek  concealment  from  their  friends  in  the 
hospitable  seclusion  of  these  refuges  in  the  great  city.  It  is  not  the 
least  advantage  of  these  institutions  that  they  shield  unmarried  mothers 
and  their  offspring  from  the  manifold  evils  to  which  they  are  exposed, 
and  thus  tend  to  decrease  crime  and  suffering.  In  addition  to  the 
maternity  refuges,  there  are  institutions  in  France  for  assisting  with 
help  and  advice  those  pregnant  women  who  prefer  to  remain  at  home, 
but  are  thus  enabled  to  avoid  the  necessity  for  undue  domestic  labor. 

There  ought  to  be  no  manner  of  doubt  that  when,  as  is  the  case 
to-day  in  our  own  and  some  other  supposedly  civilized  countries,  mother- 
hood outside  marriage  is  accounted  as  almost  a  crime,  there  is  the  very 
greatest  need  for  adequate  provision  for  unmarried  women  who  are 
about  to  become  mothers,  enabling  them  to  receive  shelter  and  care  in 
secrecy,  and  to  preserve  their  self-respect  and  social  position.  This  is 
necessary  not  only  in  the  interests  of  humanity  and  public  economy,  but 
also,  as  is  too  often  forgotten,  in  the  interests  of  morality,  for  it  is 
certain  that  by  the  neglect  to  furnish  adequate  provision  of  this  nature 
women  are  driven  to  infanticide  and  prostitution.  In  earlier,  more 
humane  days,  the  general  provision  for  the  secret  reception  and  care  of 
illegitimate  infants  was  undoubtedly  most  beneficial.  The  suppression 
of  the  mediaeval  method,  which  in  France  took  place  gradually  between 
1833  and  1862,  led  to  a  great  increase  in  infanticide  and  abortion,  and 
was  a  direct  encouragement  to  crime  and  immorality.    In   1887  xhe 


THE    MOTHER    AND    HER    CHILD.  13 

Conseil  General  of  the  Seine  sought  to  replace  the  prevailing  neglect  of 
this  matter  by  the  adoption  of  more  enlightened  ideas  and  founded  a 
bureau  secret  d' admission  for  pregnant  women.  Since  then  both  the 
abandonment  of  infants  and  infanticide  have  greatly  diminished,  though 
they  are  increasing  in  those  parts  of  France  which  possess  no  facilities 
of  this  kind.  It  is  widely  held  that  the  State  should  unify  the  arrange- 
ments for  assuring  secret  maternity,  and  should,  in  its  own  interests, 
undertake  the  expense.  In  1904  French  law  ensured  the  protection  of 
unmarried  mothers  by  guaranteeing  their  secret,  but  it  failed  to  organize 
the  general  establishment  of  secret  maternities,  and  has  left  to  doctors 
the  pioneering  part  in  this  great  and  humane  public  work  (A.  Maillard- 
Brune,  Refuges,  Materniies,  Bureaux  d' 'Admission  Secrets,  comme  Moyens 
Preservatives  des  Infanticide,  These  de  Paris,  1908).  It  is  not  among 
the  least  benefits  of  the  falling  birth  rate  that  it  has  helped  to  stimulate 
this  beneficent  movement. 


The  development  of  an  industrial  system  which  subordinates 
the  human  body  and  the  human  soul  to  the  thirst  for  gold,  has,  for 
a  time,  dismissed  from  social  consideration  the  interests  of  the 
race  and  even  of  the  individual,  but  it  must  be  remembered  that 
this  has  not  been  always  and  everywhere  so.  Although  in  some 
parts  of  the  world  the  women  of  savage  peoples  work  up  to  the 
time  of  confinement,  it  must  be  remarked  that  the  conditions  of 
work  in  savage  life  do  not  resemble  the  strenuous  and  continuous 
labor  of  modern  factories.  In  many  parts  of  the  world,  how- 
ever, women  are  not  allowed  to  work  hard  during  pregnancy  and 
every  consideration  is  shown  to  them.  This  is  so,  for  instance, 
among  the  Pueblo  Indians,  and  among  the  Indians  of  Mexico. 
Similar  care  is  taken  in  the  Carolines  and  the  Gilbert  Islands 
and  in  many  other  regions  all  over  the  world.  In  some  places, 
women  are  secluded  during  pregnancy,  and  in  others  are  com- 
pelled to  observe  many  more  or  less  excellent  rules.  It  is  true 
that  the  assigned  cause  for  these  rules  is  frequently  the  fear  of 
evil  spirits,  but  they  nevertheless  often  preserve  a  hygienic  value. 
In  many  parts  of  the  world  the  discovery  of  pregnancy  is  the  sign 
for  a  festival  of  more  or  less  ritual  character,  and  much  good 
advice  is  given  to  the  expectant  mother.  The  modern  Mussel- 
mans  are  careful  to  guard  the  health  of  their  women  when  preg- 


14  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

nant,  and  so  are  the  Chinese.1  Even  in  Europe,  in  the  thirteenth 
century,  as  Clappier  notes,  industrial  corporations  sometimes  had 
regard  to  this  matter,  and  would  not  allow  women  to  work  during 
pregnancy.  In  Iceland,  where  much  of  the  primitive  life  of 
Scandinavian  Europe  is  still  preserved,  great  precautions  are 
taken  with  pregnant  women.  They  must  lead  a  quiet  life,  avoid 
tight  garments,  be  moderate  in  eating  and  drinking,  take  no 
alcohol,  be  safeguarded  from  all  shocks,  while  their  husbands  and 
all  others  who  surround  them  must  treat  them  with  consideration, 
save  them  from  worry  and  always  bear  with  them  patiently.2 

It  is  necessary  to  emphasize  this  point  because  we  have  to 
realize  that  the  modern  movement  for  surrounding  the  pregnant 
woman  with  tenderness  and  care,  so  far  from  being  the  mere 
outcome  of  civilized  softness  and  degeneracy,  is,  in  all  probability, 
the  return  on  a  higher  plane  to  the  sane  practice  of  those  races 
which  laid  the  foundations  of  human  greatness. 

While  rest  is  the  cardinal  virtue  imposed  on  a  woman 
during  the  later  months  of  pregnancy,  there  are  other  points  in 
her  regimen  that  are  far  from  unimportant  in  their  bearing  on 
the  fate  of  the  child.  One  of  these  is  the  question  of  the 
mother's  use  of  alcohol.  Undoubtedly  alcohol  has  been  a  cause 
of  much  fanaticism.  But  the  declamatory  extravagance  of  anti- 
alcoholists  must  not  blind  us  to  the  fact  that  the  evils  of  alcohol 


1  The  importance  of  antenatal  puericulture  was  fully  recognized 
in  China  a  thousand  years  ago.  Thus  Madame  Cheng  wrote  at  that  time 
concerning  the  education  of  the  child:  "Even  before  birth  his  education 
may  begin;  and,  therefore,  the  prospective  mother  of  old,  when  lying 
down,  lay  straight;  when  sitting  down,  sat  upright;  and  when  stand- 
ing, stood  erect.  She  would  not  taste  strange  flavors,  nor  have  any- 
thing to  do  with  spiritualism;  if  her  food  were  not  cut  straight  she 
would  not  eat  it,  and  if  her  mat  were  not  set  straight,  she  would  not 
sit  upon  it.  She  would  not  look  at  any  objectionable  sight,  nor  listen 
to  any  objectionable  sound,  nor  utter  any  rude  word,  nor  handle  any 
impure  thing.  At  night  she  studied  some  canonical  work,  by  day  she 
occupied  herself  with  ceremonies  and  music.  Therefore,  her  sons  were 
upright  and  eminent  for  their  talents  and  virtues;  such  was  the  result 
of  antenatal  training"  (H.  A.  Giles,  "Woman  in  Chinese  Literature." 
Nineteenth  Century,  Nov.,  1904). 

2  Max  Bartels,  "Islandischer  Brauch,"  etc.,  Zeitschrift  fur  Ethnol- 
ogie,  1900,  p.  65.  A  summary  of  the  customs  of  various  peoples  in 
regard  to  pregnancy  is  given  by  Ploss  and  Bartels,  Das  Weib,  Sect. 
XXIX. 


THE    MOTHER    AND    HER    CHILD.  15 

are  real.  On  the  reproductive  process  especially,  on  the  mam- 
mary glands,  and  on  the  child,  alcohol  has  an  arresting  and 
degenerative  influence  without  any  compensatory  advantages. 
It  has  been  proved  by  experiments  on  animals  and  observations 
on  the  human  subject  that  alcohol  taken  by  the  pregnant  woman 
passes  freely  from  the  maternal  circulation  to  the  foetal  circula- 
tion. Fere  has  further  shown  that,  by  injecting  alcohol  and 
aldehydes  into  hen's  eggs  during  incubation,  it  is  possible  to 
cause  arrest  of  development  and  malformation  in  the  chick.1 
The  woman  who  is  bearing  her  child  in  her  womb  or  suckling  it 
at  her  breast  would  do  well  to  remember  that  the  alcohol  which 
may  be  harmless  to  herself  is  little  better  than  poison  to  the 
immature  being  who  derives  nourishment  from  her  blood.  She 
should  confine  herself  to  the  very  lightest  of  alcoholic  beverages 
in  very  moderate  amounts  and  would  do  better  still  to  abandon 
these  entirely  and  drink  milk  instead.  She  is  now  the  sole 
source  of  the  child's  life  and  she  cannot  be  too  scrupulous  in 
creating  around  it  an  atmosphere  of  purity  and  health.  No 
after-influence  can  ever  compensate  for  mistakes  made  at  this 
time.2 

What  is  true  of  alcohol  is  equally  true  of  other  potent  drugs 
and  poisons,  which  should  all  be  avoided  so  far  as  possible  during 
pregnancy  because  of  the  harmful  influence  they  may  directly 
exert  on  the  embryo.  Hygiene  is  better  than  drugs,  and  care 
should  be  exercised  in  diet,  which  should  by  no  means  be  exces- 
sive. It  is  a  mistake  to  suppose  that  the  pregnant  woman  needs 
considerably  more  food  than  usual,  and  there  is  much  reason  to 


1  On  the  influence  of  alcohol  during  pregnancy  on  the  embryo,  see, 
e.g.,  G.  Newman,  Infant  Mortality,  pp.  72-77.  W.  C.  Sullivan  (Alcohol- 
ism, 1906,  Ch.  XI),  summarizes  the  evidence  showing  that  alcohol  is  a 
factor  in  human  degeneration. 

2  There  is  even  reason  to  believe  that  the  alcoholism  of  the  mother's 
father  may  impair  her  ability  as  a  mother.  Bunge  (Die  ZuneJimende 
Unfahigkeit  der  Frauen  Hire  Kinder  zu  Stillen,  fifth  edition,  1907 ) ,  from 
an  investigation  extending  over  2,000  families,  finds  that  chronic  alco- 
holic poisoning  in  the  father  is  the  chief  cause  of  the  daughter's  inability 
to  suckle,  this  inability  not  usually  being  recovered  in  subsequent  gen- 
erations. Bunge  has,  however,  been  opposed  by  Dr.  Agnes  Bluhm,  "Die 
Stillungsnot,"  Zeitschrift  filr  Soziale  Medizin,  1908  (fully  summarized 
by  herself  in  Seccual-Probleme,  Jan.,  1909). 


16  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

believe  not  only  that  a  rich  meat  diet  tends  to  cause  sterility  but 
that  it  is  also  unfavorable  to  the  development  of  the  child  in 
the  womb.1 

How  far,  if  at  all,  it  is  often  asked,  should  sexual  intercourse 
be  continued  after  fecundation  has  been  clearly  ascertained? 
This  has  not  always  been  found  an  easy  question  to  answer,  for 
in  the  human  couple  many  considerations  combine  to  complicate 
the  answer.  Even  the  Catholic  theologians  have  not  been  entirely 
in  agreement  on  this  point.  Clement  of  Alexandria  said  that 
when  the  seed  had  been  sown  the  field  must  be  left  till  harvest. 
But  it  may  be  concluded  that,  as  a  rule,  the  Church  was  inclined 
to  regard  intercourse  during  pregnancy  as  at  most  a  venial  sin, 
provided  there  was  no  danger  of  abortion.  Augustine,  Gregory 
the  Great,  Aquinas,  Dens,  for  instance,  seem  to  be  of  this  mind ; 
for  a  few,  indeed,  it  is  no  sin  at  all.2  Among  animals  the  rule  is 
simple  and  uniform;  as  soon  as  the  female  is  impregnated  at 
the  period  of  oestrus  she  absolutely  rejects  all  advance  of  the 
male  until,  after  birth  and  lactation  are  over,  another  period  of 
oestrus  occurs.  Among  savages  the  tendency  is  less  uniform, 
and  sexual  abstinence,  when  it  occurs  during  pregnancy,  tends  to 
become  less  a  natural  instinct  than  a  ritual  observance,  or  a 
custom  now  chiefly  supported  by  superstitions.  Among  many 
primitive  peoples  abstinence  during  the  whole  of  pregnancy  is 
enjoined  because  it  is  believed  that  the  semen  would  kill  the 
foetus.3 

The  Talmud  is  unfavorable  to  coitus  during  pregnancy,  and  the 
Koran  prohibits  it  during  the  whole  of  the  period,  as  well  as  during 
suckling.  Among  the  Hindus,  on  the  other  hand,  intercourse  is  con- 
tinued up  to  the  last  fortnight  of  pregnancy,  and  it  is  even  believed  that 
the  injected  semen  helps  to  nourish  the  embryo    (W.   D.   Sutherland, 


1  See,  e.g.,  T.  Arthur  Helme,  "The  Unborn  Child,""  British  Medical 
Journal,  Aug.  24,  1907.  Nutrition  should,  of  course,  be  adequate. 
Noel  Paton  has  shown  {Lancet,  July  4,  1903)  that  defective  nutrition 
of  the  pregnant  woman  diminishes  the  weight  of  the  offspring. 

2  Debreyne,  Moechialogie,  p.  277.  And  from  the  Protestant  side 
see  Northcote  (Christianity  and  Sew  Problems,  Ch.  IX),  who  permits 
sexual  intercourse  during  pregnancy. 

3  See  Appendix  A  to  the  third  volume  of  these  Studies;  also  Ploas 
and  Bartels,  loc.  cit. 


THE  MOTHER  AND  HER  CHILD.  17 

"Ueber  da3  Alltagsleben  und  die  Volksmedizin  unter  den  Bauern  Briti- 
schostindiens,"  Miinchener  Medizinische  Wochenschrift,  Nos.  12  and  13, 
1906).  The  great  Indian  physician  Susruta,  however,  was  opposed  to 
coitus  during  pregnancy,  and  the  Chinese  are  emphatically  on  the  same 
side. 

As  men  have  emerged  from  barbarism  in  the  direction  of 
civilization,  the  animal  instinct  of  refusal  after  impregnation 
has  been  completely  lost  in  women,  while  at  the  same  time  both 
sexes  tend  to  become  indifferent  to  those  ritual  restraints  which 
at  an  earlier  period  were  almost  as  binding  as  instinct.  Sexual 
intercourse  thus  came  to  be  practiced  after  impregnation,  much 
the  same  as  before,  as  part  of  ordinary  "marital  rights/'  though 
sometimes  there  has  remained  a  faint  suspicion,  reflected  in  the 
hesitating  attitude  of  the  Catholic  Church  already  alluded  to, 
that  such  intercourse  may  be  a  sinful  indulgence.  Morality  is, 
however,  called  in  to  fortify  this  indulgence.  If  the  husband  is 
shut  out  from  marital  intercourse  at  this  time,  it  is  argued,  he 
will  seek  extra-marital  intercourse,  as  indeed  in  some  parts  of 
the  world  it  is  recognized  that  he  legitimately  may;  therefore 
the  interests  of  the  wife,  anxious  to  retain  her  husband's  fidelity, 
and  the  interests  of  Christian  morality,  anxious  to  uphold  the 
institution  of  monogamy,  combine  to  permit  the  continuation  of 
coitus  during  pregnancy.  The  custom  has  been  furthered  by  the 
fact  that,  in  civilized  women  at  all  events,  coitus  during  preg- 
nancy is  usually  not  less  agreeable  than  at  other  times  and  by 
some  women  is  felt  indeed  to  be  even  more  agreeable.1  There  is 
also  the  further  consideration,  for  those  couples  who  have  sought 
to  prevent  conception,  that  now  intercourse  may  be  enjoyed  with 
impunity.  From  a  higher  point  of  view  such  intercourse  may 
also  be  justified,  for  if,  as  all  the  finer  moralists  of  the  sexual 
impulse  now  believe,  love  has  its  value  not  only  in  so  far  as  it 
induces  procreation  but  also  in  so  far  as  it  aids  individual 


1  Thus  one  lady  writes :  "I  have  only  had  one  child,  but  I  may 
say  that  during  pregnancy  the  desire  for  union  was  much  stronger,  for 
the  whole  time,  than  at  any  other  period."  Bouchacourt  (La  Grossesse, 
pp.  180-183)  states  that,  as  a  ride,  sexual  desire  is  not  diminished  by 
pregnancy,  and  is  occasionally  increased. 


18  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

development  and  the  mutual  good  and  harmony  of  the  united 
couple,  it  becomes  morally  right  during  pregnancy. 

From  an  early  period,  however,  great  authorities  have 
declared  themselves  in  opposition  to  the  custom  of  practicing 
coitus  during  pregnancy.  At  the  end  of  the  first  century, 
Soranus,  the  first  of  great  gynaecologists,  stated,  in  his  treatise 
on  the  diseases  of  women,  that  sexual  intercourse  is  injurious 
throughout  pregnancy,  because  of  the  movement  imparted  to  the 
uterus,  and  especially  injurious  during  the  latter  months.  For 
more  than  sixteen  hundred  years  the  question,  having  fallen  into 
the  hands  of  the  theologians,  seems  to  have  been  neglected  on 
the  medical  side  until  in  1721  a  distinguished  French  obstet- 
rician, Mauriceau,  stated  that  no  pregnant  woman  should  have 
intercourse  during  the  last  two  months  and  that  no  woman  sub- 
ject to  miscarriage  should  have  intercourse  at  all  during 
pregnancy.  For  more  than  a  century,  however,  Mauriceau 
remained  a  pioneer  with  few  or  no  followers.  It  would  be 
inconvenient,  the  opinion  went,  even  if  it  were  necessary,  to 
forbid  intercourse  during  pregnancy.1 

During  recent  years,  nevertheless,  there  has  been  an 
increasingly  strong  tendency  among  'obstetricians  to  speak 
decisively  concerning  intercourse  during  pregnancy,  either  by 
condemning  it  altogether  or  by  enjoining  great  prudence.  It  is 
highly  probable  that,  in  accordance  with  the  classical  experiments 
of  Dareste  on  chicken  embryos,  shocks  and  disturbances  to  the 
human  embryo  may  also  produce  injurious  effects  on  growth. 
The  disturbance  due  to  coitus  in  the  early  stages  of  pregnancy 
may  thus  tend  to  produce  malformation.  When  such  conditions 
are  found  in  the  children  of  perfectly  healthy,  vigorous,  and  gen- 
erally temperate  parents  who  have  indulged  recklessly  in  coitus 

1  This  "inconvenience"  remains  to-day  a  stumbling-block  with  many 
excellent  authorities.  "Except  when  there  is  a  tendency  to  miscar- 
riage," says  Kossmann  (Senator  and  Kaminer,  Health  and  Disease  in 
Relation  to  Marriage,  vol.  i,  p.  257),  "we  must  be  very  guarded  in 
ordering  abstinence  from  intercourse  during  pregnancy,"  and  Ballantyne 
{The  Foetus,  p.  475)  cautiously  remarks  that  the  question  is  difficult 
to  decide.  Forel  also  (Die  Sexuelle  Frage,  fourth  edition,  p.  81),  who 
is  not  prepared  to  advocate  complete  sexual  abstinence  during  a  normal 
pregnancy,  admits  that  it  is  a  rather  difficult  question. 


THE  MOTHER  AND  HER  CHILD.  19 

during  the  early  stages  of  pregnancy  it  is  possible  tliat  such, 
coitus  has  acted  on  the  embryo  in  the  same  way  as  shocks  and 
intoxications  are  known  to  act  on  the  embryo  of  lower  organisms. 
However  this  may  be,  it  is  quite  certain  that  in  predisposed 
women,  coitus  during  pregnancy  causes  premature  birth ;  it 
sometimes  happen.;  that  iabur  pains  begin  a  few  minutes  after 
the  act.1  The  natural  instinct  of  animals  refuses  to  allow 
intercourse  during  pregnancy ;  the  ritual  observance  of  primitive 
peoples  very  frequently  points  in  the  same  direction;  the  voice 
of  medical  science,  so  far  as  it  speaks  at  all,  is  beginning  to 
utter  the  same  warning,  and  before  long  will  probably  be  in  a 
position  to  do  so  on  the  basis  of  more  solid  and  coherent  evidence. 

Pinard,  the  greatest  of  authorities  on  puericulture,  asserts  that 
there  must  be  complete  cessation  of  sexual  intercourse  during  the  whole 
of  pregnancy,  and  in  his  consulting  room  at  the  Clinique  Baudelocque 
he  has  placed  a  large  placard  with  an  "Important  Notice"  to  this  effect. 
Fere  was  strongly  of  opinion  that  sexual  relations  during  pregnancy, 
especially  when  recklessly  carried  out,  play  an  important  part  in  the 
causation  of  nervous  troubles  in  children  who  are  of  sound  heredity  and 
otherwise  free  from  all  morbid  infection  during  gestation  and  develop- 
ment; he  recorded  in  detail  a  case  which  he  considered  conclusive 
("L'lnfluence  de  l'lncontinence  Sexuelle  pendant  la  Gestation  sur  la 
Descendance,"  Archives  de  Neurologie,  April,  1905).  Bouchacourt  dis- 
cusses the  subject  fully  (La  Grossesse,  pp.  177-214),  and  thinks  that 
sexual  intercourse  during  pregnancy  should  be  avoided  as  much  as  pos- 
sible. FHrbringer  (Senator  and  Kaminer,  Health  and  Disease  in  Rela- 
tion to  Marriage,  vol.  i,  p.  226)  recommends  abstinence  from  the  sixth 
or  seventh  month,  and  throughout  the  whole  of  pregnancy  where  there 
is  any  tendency  to  miscarriage,  while  in  all  cases  much  care  and  gentle- 
ness should  be  exercised. 

The  whole  subject  has  been  investigated  in  a  Paris  Thesis  by  H. 
Brenot  (De  l'lnfluence  de  la  Copulation  pendant  la  Grossesse,  1903)  ;  he 
concludes  that  sexual  relations  are  dangerous  throughout  pregnancy, 
frequently  provoking  premature  confinement  or  abortion,  and  that  they 
are  more  dangerous  in  primipara  than  in  multiparae. 


i  This  point  is  discussed,  for  instance,  by  SSropian  in  a  Paris 
Thesis  (Frequence  comparee  des  Causes  de  V Accouchement  Premature", 
1907)  ;  he  concludes  that  coitus  during  pregnancy  is  a  more  frequent 
cause  of  premature  confinement  than  is  commonly  supposed,  especially 
in  primipara?,  and  markedly  so  by  the  ninth  month. 


20  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

Nearly  everything  that  has  been  said  of  the  hygiene  of  preg- 
nancy, and  the  need  for  rest,  applies  also  to  the  period 
immediately  following  the  birth  of  the  child.  Eest  and  hygiene 
on  the  mother's  part  continue  to  be  necessary  alike  in  her  own 
interests  and  in  the  child's.  This  need  has  indeed  been  more 
generally  and  more  practically  recognized  than  the  need  for  rest 
during  pregnancy.  The  laws  of  several  countries  make  compul- 
sory a  period  of  rest  from  employment  after  confinement,  and  in 
some  countries  they  seek  to  provide  for  the  remuneration  of  the 
mother  during  this  enforced  rest.  In  no  country,  indeed,  is  the 
principle  carried  out  so  thoroughly  and  for  so  long  a  period  as 
is  desirable.  But  it  is  the  right  principle,  and  embodies  the 
germ  which,  in  the  future,  will  be  developed.  There  can  be 
little  doubt  that  whatever  are  the  matters,  and  they  are  certainly 
many,  which  may  be  safely  left  to  the  discretion  of  the  individual, 
the  care  of  the  mother  and  her  child  is  not  among  them.  That  is 
a  matter  which,  more  than  any  other,  concerns  the  community  as 
a  whole,  and  the  community  cannot  afford  to  be  slack  in  asserting 
its  authority  over  it.  The  State  needs  healthy  men  and  women, 
and  by  any  negligence  in  attending  to  this  need  it  inflicts  serious 
charges  of  all  sorts  upon  itself,  and  at  the  same  time  dangerously 
impairs  its  efficiency  in  the  world.  Nations  have  begun  to  recog- 
nize the  desirability  of  education,  but  they  have  scarcely  yet 
begun  to  realize  that  the  nationalization  of  health  is  even  more 
important  than  the  nationalization  of  education.  If  it  were 
necessary  to  choose  between  the  task  of  getting  children  educated 
and  the  task  of  getting  them  well-born  and  healthy  it  would  be 
better  to  abandon  education.  There  have  been  many  great 
peoples  who  never  dreamed  of  national  systems  of  education; 
there  has  been  no  great  people  without  the  art  of  producing 
healthy  and  vigorous  children. 

This  matter  becomes  of  peculiar  importance  in  great 
industrial  states  like  England,  the  United  States,  and  Ger- 
many, because  in  such  states  a  tacit  conspiracy  tends  to  grow  up 
to  subordinate  national  ends  to  individual  ends,  and  practically 
to  work  for  the  deterioration  of  the  race.  In  England,  for 
instance,  this  tendency  has  become  peculiarly  well  marked  with 


THE    MOTHER    AND    HER    CHILD.  21 

disastrous  results.  The  interest  of  the  employed  woman  tends  to 
become  one  with  that  of  her  employer;  between  them  they  com- 
bine to  crush  the  interests  of  the  child  who  represents  the  race, 
and  to  defeat  the  laws  made  in  the  interests  of  the  race  which  are 
those  of  the  community  as  a  whole.  The  employed  woman  wishes 
to  earn  as  much  wages  as  she  can  and  with  as  little  interruption 
as  she  can;  in  gratifying  that  wish  she  is,  at  the  same  time, 
acting  in  the  interests  of  the  employer,  who  carefully  avoids 
thwarting  her. 

This  impulse  on  the  employed  woman's  part  is  by  no  means 
always  and  entirely  the  result  of  poverty,  and  would  not,  there- 
fore, be  removed  by  raising  her  wages.  Long  before  marriage, 
when  little  more  than  a  child,  she  has  usually  gone  out  to  work, 
and  work  has  become  a  second  nature.  She  has  mastered  her 
work,  she  enjoys  a  certain  position  and  what  to  her  are  high 
wages;  she  is  among  her  friends  and  companions;  the  noise 
and  bustle  and  excitement  of  the  work-room  or  the  factory  have 
become  an  agreeable  stimulant  which  she  can  no  longer  do  with- 
out. On  the  other  hand,  her  home  means  nothing  to  her;  she 
only  returns  there  to  sleep,  leaving  it  next  morning  at  day- 
break or  earlier;  she  is  ignorant  even  of  the  simplest  domestic 
arts;  she  moves  about  in  her  own  home  like  a  strange  and 
awkward  child.  The  mere  act  of  marriage  cannot  change  this 
state  of  things;  however  willing  she  may  be  at  marriage  to 
become  a  domesticated  wife,  she  is  destitute  alike  of  the  inclina- 
tion or  the  skill  for  domesticity.  Even  in  spite  of  herself  she  is 
driven  back  to  the  work-shop,  to  the  one  place  where  she  feels 
really  at  home. 

In  Germany  women  are  not  allowed  to  work  for  four  weeks  after 
confinement,  nor  during  the  following  two  weeks  except  by  medical 
certificate.  The  obligatory  insurance  against  disease  which  covers 
women  at  confinement  assures  them  an  indemnity  at  this  time  equivalent 
to  a  large  part  of  their  wages.  Married  and  unmarried  mothers  benefit 
alike.  The  Austrian  law  is  founded  on  the  same  model.  This  measure 
has  led  to  a  very  great  decrease  in  infantile  mortality,  and,  therefore, 
a  great  increase  in  health  among  those  who  survive.  It  is,  however, 
regarded  as  very  inadequate,  and  there  is  a  movement  in  Germany  for 
extending  the  time,  for  applying  the  system  to  a  larger  number  of  women, 
and  for  making  it  still  more  definitely  compulsory. 


22  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

In  Switzerland  it  lias  been  illegal  since  1877  for  any  woman  to  be 
received  into  a  factory  after  confinement,  unless  she  has  rested  in  all 
for  eight  weeks,  six  weeks  at  least  of  this  period  being  after  confine- 
ment. Since  1898  Swiss  working  women  have  been  protected  by  law 
from  exercising  hard  work  during  pregnancy,  and  from  various  other 
influences  likely  to  be  injurious.  But  this  law  is  evaded  in  practice, 
because  it  provides  no  compensatory  indemnity  for  the  woman.  An 
attempt,  in  1899,  to  amend  the  law  by  providing  for  such  indemnity 
was  rejected  by  the  people. 

In  Belgium  and  Holland  there  are  laws  against  women  working 
immediately  after  confinement,  but  no  indemnity  is  provided,  so  that 
employers  and  employed  combine  to  evade  the  law.  In  France  there  is 
no  such  law,  although  its  necessity  has  often  been  emphatically  asserted 
(see,  e.g.,  Salvat,  La  Depopulation  de  la  France,  These  de  Lyon,  1903). 

In  England  it  is  illegal  to  employ  a  woman  "knowingly"  in  a 
workshop  within  four  weeks  of  the  birth  of  her  child,  but  no  provision 
is  made  by  the  law  for  the  compensation  of  the  woman  who  is  thus 
required  to  sacrifice  herself  to  the  interests  of  the  State.  The  woman 
evades  the  law  in  tacit  collusion  with  her  employers,  who  can  always 
avoid  "knowing"  that  a  birth  has  taken  place,  and  so  escape  all  respon- 
sibility for  the  mother's  employment.  Thus  the  factory  inspectors  are 
unable  to  take  action,  and  the  law  becomes  a  dead  letter;  in  1906  only 
one  prosecution  for  this  offense  could  be  brought  into  court.  By  tli3 
insertion  of  this  "knowingly"  a  premium  is  placed  on  ignorance.  The 
unwisdom  of  thus  beforehand  placing  a  premium  on  ignorance  has 
always  been  more  or  less  clearly  recognized  by  the  framers  of  legal  codes 
even  as  far  back  as  the  days  of  the  Ten  Commandments  and  the  laws  of 
Hamurabi.  It  is  the  business  of  the  Court,  of  those  who  administer  the 
law,  to  make  allowance  for  ignorance  where  such  allowance  is  fairly 
called  for;  it  is  not  for  the  law-maker  to  make  smooth  the  path  of  the 
law-breaker.  There  are  evidently  law-makers  nowadays  so  scrupulous, 
or  so  simple-minded,  that  they  would  be  prepared  to  exact  that  no  pick- 
pocket should  be  prosecuted  if  he  was  able  to  declare  on  oath  that  he 
had  no  "knowledge"  that  the  purse  he  had  taken  belonged  to  the  person 
he  extracted  it  from. 

The  annual  reports  of  the  English  factory  inspectors  serve  to 
bring  ridicule  on  this  law,  which  looks  so  wisely  humane  and  yet  means 
nothing,  but  have  so  far  been  powerless  to  effect  any  change.  These 
reports  show,  moreover,  that  the  difficulty  is  increasing  in  magnitude. 
Thus  Miss  Martindale,  a  factory  inspector,  states  that  in  all  the  towns 
she  visits,  from  a  quiet  cathedral  city  to  a  large  manufacturing  town, 
the  employment  of  married  women  is  rapidly  increasing;  they  have 
worked  in  mills  or  factories  all  their  lives  and  are  quite  unaccustomed 
to  cooking,  housework  and  the  rearing  of  children,  so  that  after  mar- 


THE  MOTHER  AND  HER  CHILD.  23 

riage,  even  when  not  compelled  by  poverty,  they  prefer  to  go  on  working 
as  before.  Miss  Vines,  another  factory  inspector,  repeats  the  remark  of 
a  woman  worker  in  a  factory.  "I  do  not  need  to  work,  but  I  do  not  like 
staying  at  home,"  while  another  woman  said,  "I  would  rather  be  at 
work  a  hundred  times  than  at  home.  I  get  lost  at  home"  (Annual 
Report  Chief  Inspector  of  Factories  and  Workshops  for  1906,  pp.  325, 
etc.). 

It  may  be  added  that  not  only  is  the  English  law  enjoining  four 
weeks'  rest  on  the  mother  after  childbirth  practically  inoperative,  but 
the  period  itself  is  absurdly  inadequate.  As  a  rest  for  the  mother  it  is 
indeed  sufficient,  but  the  State  is  still  more  interested  in  the  child  than 
in  its  mother,  and  the  child  needs  the  mother's  chief  care  for  a  much 
longer  period  than  four  weeks.  Helme  advocates  the  State  prohibition 
of  women's  work  for  at  least  six  months  after  confinement.  Where  nur- 
series are  attached  to  factories,  enabling  the  mother  to  suckle  her  infant 
in  intervals  of  work,  the  period  may  doubtless  be  shortened. 

It  is  important  to  remember  that  it  is  by  no  means  only  the  women 
in  factories  who  are  induced  to  work  as  usual  during  the  whole  period 
of  pregnancy,  and  to  return  to  work  immediately  after  the  brief  rest  of 
confinement.  The  Research  Committee  of  the  Christian  Social  Union 
(London  Branch)  undertook,  in  1905,  an  inquiry  into  the  employment 
of  women  after  childbirth.  Women  in  factories  and  workshops  were 
excluded  from  the  inquiry  which  only  had  reference  to  women  engaged 
in  household  duties,  in  home  industries,  and  in  casual  work.  It  was 
found  that  the  majority  carry  on  their  employment  right  up  to  the  time 
of  confinement  and  resume  it  from  ten  to  fourteen  days  later.  The 
infantile  death  rate  for  the  children  of  women  engaged  only  in  household 
duties  was  greatly  lower  than  that  for  the  children  of  the  other  women, 
while,  as  ever,  the  hand-fed  infants  had  a  vastly  higher  death  rate  than 
the  breast-fed  infants  (British  Medical  Journal,  Oct.  24,  1908,  p.  1297). 

In  the  great  French  gun  and  armour-plate  works  at  Creuzot  ( SaSne 
et  Loire)  the  salaries  of  expectant  mothers  among  the  employees  are 
raised;  arrangements  are  made  for  giving  them  proper  advice  and  med- 
ical attendance;  they  are  not  allowed  to  work  after  the  middle  of 
pregnancy  or  to  return  to  work  after  confinement  without  a  medical 
certificate  of  fitness.  The  results  are  said  to  be  excellent,  not  only  on 
the  health  of  the  mothers,  but  in  the  diminution  of  premature  births, 
the  decrease  of  infantile  deaths,  and  the  general  prevalence  of  breast- 
feeding. It  would  probably  be  hopeless  to  expect  many  employers  in 
Anglo-Saxon  lands  to  adopt  this  policy.  They  are  too  "practical,"  they 
know  how  small  is  the  money-value  of  human  lives.  With  us  it  is  neces- 
sary for  the  State  to  intervene. 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that,  on  the  whole,  modern  civilized  com- 
munities are  beginning  to  realize  that  under  the  social  and  economic 


24  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

conditions  now  tending  more  and  more  to  prevail,  they  must  in  their 
own  interests  insure  that  the  mother's  best  energy  and  vitality  are 
devoted  to  the  child,  both  before  and  after  its  birth.  They  are  also 
realizing  that  they  cannot  carry  out  their  duty  in  this  respect  unless 
they  make  adequate  provision  for  the  mothers  who  are  thus  compelled 
to  renounce  their  employment  in  order  to  devote  themselves  to  their 
children.  We  here  reach  a  point  at  which  Individualism  is  at  one  with 
Socialism.  The  individualist  cannot  fail  to  see  that  it  is  at  all  cost 
necessary  to  remove  social  conditions  which  crush  out  all  individuality; 
the  Socialist  cannot  fail  to  see  that  a  society  which  neglects  to  intro- 
duce order  at  this  central  and  vital  point,  the  production  of  the  individ- 
ual, must  speedily  perish. 

It  is  involved  in  the  proper  fulfilment  of  a  mother's 
relationship  to  her  infant  child  that,  provided  she  is  healthy,  she 
should  suckle  it.  Of  recent  years  this  question  has  become  a 
matter  of  serious  gravity.  In  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  when  the  upper-class  women  of  France  had  grown 
disinclined  to  suckle  their  own  children,  Eousseau  raised  so  loud 
and  eloquent  a  protest  that  it  became  once  more  the  fashion  for 
a  woman  to  fulfil  her  natural  duties.  At  the  present  time,  when 
the  same  evil  is  found  once  more,  and  in  a  far  more  serious  form, 
for  now  it  is  not  the  small  upper-class  but  the  great  lower- 
class  that  is  concerned,  the  eloquence  of  a  Eousseau  would  be 
powerless,  for  it  is  not  fashion  so  much  as  convenience,  and 
especially  an  intractable  economic  factor,  that  is  chiefly  con- 
cerned. Not  the  least  urgent  reason  for  putting  women,  and 
especially  mothers,  upon  a  sounder  economic  basis,  is  the 
necessity  of  enabling  them  to  suckle  their  children. 

No  woman  is  sound,  healthy,  and  complete  unless  she  possesses 
breasts  that  are  beautiful  enough  to  hold  the  promise  of  being  functional 
when  the  time  for  their  exercise  arrives,  and  nipples  that  can  give  suck. 
The  gravity  of  this  question  to-day  is  shown  by  the  frequency  with 
which  women  are  lacking  in  this  essential  element  of  womanhood,  and 
the  young  man  of  to-day,  it  has  been  said,  often  in  taking  a  wife, 
"actually  marries  but  part  of  a  woman,  the  other  part  being  exhibited 
in  the  chemist's  shop  window,  in  the  shape  of  a  glass  feeding-bottle." 
Blacker  found  among  a  thousand  patients  from  the  maternity  depart- 
ment of  University  College  Hospital  that  thirty-nine  had  never  suckled 
at  all,  seven  hundred  and  forty-seven  had  suckled  all  their  children,  and 


THE    MOTHER    AND    HER    CHILD.  25 

two  hundred  and  fourteen  had  suckled  only  some.  The  chief  reason 
given  for  not  suckling  was  absence  or  insufficiency  of  milk;  other  rea- 
sons being  inability  or  disinclination  to  suckle,  and  refusal  of  the  child 
to  take  the  breast  (Blacker,  Medical  Chronicle,  Feb.,  1900).  These 
results  among  the  London  poor  are  certainly  very  much  better  than 
could  be  found  in  many  manufacturing  towns  where  women  work  after 
marriage.  In  the  other  large  countries  of  Europe  equally  unsatisfac- 
tory results  are  found.  In  Paris  Madame  Dluska  has  shown  that  of 
209  women  who  came  for  their  confinement  to  the  Clinique  Baudelocque, 
only  74  suckled  their  children;  of  the  135  who  did  not  suckle,  35  were 
prevented  by  pathological  causes  or  absence  of  milk,  100  by  the  necessi- 
ties of  their  work.  Even  those  who  suckled  could  seldom  continue  more 
than  seven  months  on  account  of  the  physiological  strain  of  work 
(Dluska,  Contribution  a  I'Etude  de  V Allaitement  Maternel,  These  de 
Paris,  1894).  Many  statistics  have  been  gathered  in  the  German  coun- 
tries. Thus  Wiedow  (Centralblatt  fur  G-yndkologie,  No.  29,  1895) 
found  that  of  525  women  at  the  Freiburg  Maternity  only  half  could 
suckle  thoroughly  during  the  first  two  weeks;  imperfect  nipples  were 
noted  in  49  cases,  and  it  was  found  that  the  development  of  the  nipple 
bore  a  direct  relation  to  the  value  of  the  breast  as  a  secretory  organ. 
At  Munich  Escherich  and  Biiller  found  that  nearly  60  per  cent,  of  women 
of  the  lower  class  were  unable  to  suckle  their  children,  and  at  Stuttgart 
three-quarters  of  the  child-bearing  women  were  in  this  condition. 

The  reasons  why  children  should  be  suckled  at  their 
mothers'  breasts  are  larger  than  some  may  be  inclined  to  believe. 
In  the  first  place  the  psychological  reason  is  one  of  no  mean 
importance.  The  breast  with  its  exquisitely  sensitive  nipple, 
vibrating  in  harmony  with  the  sexual  organs,  furnishes  the 
normal  mechanism  by  which  maternal  love  is  developed.  No 
doubt  the  woman  who  never  suckles  her  child  may  love  it,  but 
such  love  is  liable  to  remain  defective  on  the  fundamental  and 
instinctive  side.  In  some  women,  indeed,  whom  we  may 
hesitate  to  call  abnormal,  maternal  love  fails  to  awaken  at  all 
until  brought  into  action  through  this  mechanism  by  the  act  of 
suckling. 

A  more  generally  recognized  and  certainly  fundamental 
reason  for  suckling  the  child  is  that  the  milk  of  the  mother, 
provided  she  is  reasonably  healthy,  is  the  infant's  only  ideally  fit 
food.  There  are  some  people  whose  confidence  in  science  leads 
them  to  believe  that  it  is  possible  to  manufacture  foods  that  are 


26  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

as  good  or  better  than  mother's  milk;  they  fancy  that  the  milk 
which  is  best  for  the  calf  is  equally  best  for  so  different  an 
animal  as  the  baby.  These  are  delusions.  The  infant's  best 
food  is  that  elaborated  in  his  own  mother's  body.  All  other 
foods  are  more  or  less  possible  substitutes,  which  require  trouble 
to  prepare  properly  and  are,  moreover,  exposed  to  various  risks 
from  which  the  mother's  milk  is  free. 

A  further  reason,  especially  among  the  poor,  against  the  use 
of  any  artificial  foods  is  that  it  accustoms  those  around  the 
child  to  try  experiments  with  its  feeding  and  to  fancy  that 
any  kind  of  food  they  eat  themselves  may  be  good  for  the  infant. 
It  thus  happens  that  bread  and  potatoes,  brandy  and  gin,  are 
thrust  into  infants'  mouths.  With  the  infant  that  is  given  the 
breast  it  is  easier  to  make  plain  that,  except  by  the  doctor's 
orders,  nothing  else  must  be  given. 

An  additional  reason  why  the  mother  should  suckle  her  child 
is  the  close  and  frequent  association  with  the  child  thus  involved. 
Not  only  is  the  child  better  cared  for  in  all  respects,  but  the 
mother  is  not  deprived  of  the  discipline  of  such  care,  and  is  also 
enabled  from  the  outset  to  learn  and  to  understand  the  child's 
nature. 

The  inability  to  suckle  acquires  great  significance  if  we  realize 
that  it  is  associated,  probably  in  a  large  measure  as  a  direct  cause,  with 
infantile  mortality.  The  mortality  of  artificially-fed  infants  during  the 
first  year  of  life  is  seldom  less  than  double  that  of  the  breast-fed,  some- 
times it  is  as  much  as  three  times  that  of  the  breast-fed,  or  even  more; 
thus  at  Derby  51.7  per  cent,  of  hand- fed  infants  die  under  the  age  of 
twelve  months,  but  only  8.6  per  cent,  of  breast-fed  infants.  Those  who 
survive  are  by  no  means  free  from  suffering.  At  the  end  of  the  first 
year  they  are  found  to  weigh  about  25  per  cent,  less  than  the  breast- 
fed, and  to  be  much  shorter;  they  are  more  liable  to  tuberculosis  and 
rickets,  with  all  the  evil  results  that  flow  from  these  diseases;  and 
there  is  some  reason  to  believe  that  the  development  of  their  teeth  is 
injuriously  affected.  The  degenerate  character  of  the  artificially- fed  is 
well  indicated  by  the  fact  that  of  40,000  children  who  were  brought  for 
treatment  to  the  Children's  Hospital  in  Munich,  86  per  cent,  had  been 
brought  up  by  hand,  and  the  few  who  had  been  suckled  had  usually  only 
had  the  breast  for  a  short  time.  The  evil  influence  persists  even  up  to 
adult   life.     In    some   parts   of    France   where   the   wet-nurse    industry 


THE   MOTIIEE    AND    HEB    CHILD.  27 

flourishes  so  greatly  that  nearly  all  the  children  are  brought  up  by  hand, 
it  has  been  found  that  the  percentage  of  rejected  conscripts  is  nearly 
double  that  for  France  generally.  Corresponding  results  have  been 
found  by  Friedjung  in  a  large  German  athletic  association.  Among 
155  members,  65  per  cent,  were  found  on  inquiry  to  have  been  breast- 
fed as  infants  (for  an  average  of  six  months)  ;  but  among  the  best 
athletes  the  percentage  of  breast-fed  rose  to  72  per  cent,  (for  an  average 
period  of  nine  or  ten  months),  while  for  the  group  of  56  who  stood 
lowest  in  athletic  power  the  percentage  of  breast-fed  fell  to  57  (for  an 
average  of  only  three  months). 

The  advantages  for  an  infant  of  being  suckled  by  its  mother  are 
greater  than  can  be  accounted  for  by  the  mere  fact  of  being  suckled 
rather  than  hand- fed.  This  has  been  shown  by  Vitrey  (De  la  Mortalite 
Infantile,  These  de  Lyon,  1907),  who  found  from  the  statistics 'of  the 
Hotel-Dieu  at  Lyons,  that  infants  suckled  by  their  mothers  have  a  mor- 
tality of  only  12  per  cent.,  but  if  suckled  by  strangers,  the  mortality 
rises  to  33  per  cent.  It  may  be  added  that,  while  suckling  is  essential 
to  the  complete  well-being  of  the  child,  it  is  highly  desirable  for  the 
sake  of  the  mother's  health  also.  (Some  important  statistics  are  sum- 
marized in  a  paper  on  "Infantile  Mortality"  in  British  Medical  Journal, 
Nov.  2,  1907,  while  the  various  aspects  of  suckling  have  been  thoroughly 
discussed  by  Bollinger,  "Ueber  Sauglings-Sterbliehkeit  und  die  Erbliche 
functionelle  Atrophie  der  menschlichen  Milchdruse"  (Correspondenz- 
olatt  Deutschen  Gesellschaft  Anthropologie,  Oct.,  1899). 

It  appears  that  in  Sweden,  in  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century, 
it  was  a  punishable  offense  for  a  woman  to  give  her  baby  the  bottle 
when  she  was  able  to  suckle  it.  In  recent  years  Prof.  Anton  von  Men- 
ger,  of  Vienna,  has  argued  (in  his  Burgerliche  Recht  und  die  Besitzlosen 
Elassen)  that  the  future  generation  has  the  right  to  make  this  claim, 
and  he  proposes  that  every  mother  shall  be  legally  bound  to  suckle  her 
child  unless  her  inability  to  do  so  has  been  certified  by  a  physician. 
E.  A.  Schroeder  (Das  Recht  in  der  Geschlechtlichen  Ordnung,  1893,  p. 
346)  also  argued  that  a  mother  should  be  legally  bound  to  suckle  her 
infant  for  at  least  nine  months,  unless  solid  grounds  could  be  shown  to 
the  contrary,  and  this  demand,  which  seems  reasonable  and  natural, 
since  it  is  a  mother's  privilege  as  well  as  her  duty  to  suckle  her  infant 
when  able  to  do  so,  has  been  insistently  made  by  others  also.  It 
has  been  supported  from  the  legal  side  by  Weinberg  ( Mutterchutz,  Sept., 
1907).  In  France  the  Loi  Roussel  foi'bids  a  woman  to  act  as  a  wet- 
nurse  until  her  child  is  seven  months  old,  and  this  has  had  an  excellent 
effect  in  lowering  infantile  mortality  (A.  Allge,  Pue"riculture  et  la  Loi 
Roussel,  Th£se  de  Paris,  1908).  In  some  parts  of  Germany  manufact- 
urers are  compelled  to  set  up  a  suckling-room  in  the  factory,  where 
mothers  can  give  the  breast  to  the  child  in  the  intervals  of  work.     The 


28  PSYCHOLOGY   OP    SEX. 

control  and  upkeep  of  these  rooms,  with  provision  of  doctors  and  nurses, 
is  undertaken  by  the  municipality  {Sexual-Probleme,  Sept.,  1908,  p. 
573). 

As  things  are  to-day  in  modern  industrial  countries  the 
righting  of  these  wrongs  cannot  he  left  to  Nature,  that  is,  to  the 
ignorant  and  untrained  impulses  of  persons  who  live  in  a  whirl 
of  artificial  life  where  the  voice  of  instinct  is  drowned.  The 
mother,  we  are  accustomed  to  think,  may  be  trusted  to  see  to 
the  welfare  of  her  child,  and  it  is  unnecessary,  or  even  "immoral," 
to  come  to  her  assistance.  Yet  there  are  few  things,  I  think, 
more  pathetic  than  the  sight  of  a  young  Lancashire  mother  who 
works  in  the  mills,  when  she  has  to  stay  at  home  to  nurse  her 
sick  child.  She  is  used  to  rise  before  day-break  to  go  to  the 
mill ;  she  has  scarcely  seen  her  child  by  the  light  of  the  sun,  she 
knows  nothing  of  its  necessities,  the  hands  that  are  so  skilful  to 
catch  the  loom  cannot  soothe  the  child.  The  mother  gazes  down 
at  it  in  vague,  awkward,  speechless  misery.  It  is  not  a  sight  one 
can  ever  forget. 

It  is  France  that  is  taking  the  lead  in  the  initiation  of  the 
scientific  and  practical  movements  for  the  care  of  the  young  child 
before  and  after  birth,  and  it  is  in  France  that  we  may  find  the 
germs  of  nearly  all  the  methods  now  becoming  adopted  for 
arresting  infantile  mortality.  The  village  system  of  Villiers-le- 
Duc,  near  Dijon  in  the  Cote  d'Or,  has  proved  a  germ  of  this 
fruitful  kind.  Here  every  pregnant  woman  not  able  to  secure  the 
right  conditions  for  her  own  life  and  that  of  the  child  she  is  bear- 
ing, is  able  to  claim  the  assistance  of  the  village  authorities ;  she 
is  entitled,  without  payment,  to  the  attendance  of  a  doctor  and 
midwife  and  to  one  franc  a  day  during  her  confinement.  The 
measures  adopted  in  this  village  have  practically  abolished  both 
maternal  and  infantile  mortality.  A  few  years  ago  Dr.  Samson 
Moore,  the  medical  officer  of  health  for  Huddersfield,  heard  of 
this  village,  and  Mr.  Benjamin  Broadbent,  the  Mayor  of  Hud- 
dersfield, visited  Villiers-le-Duc.  It  was  resolved  to  initiate  in 
Huddersfield  a  movement  for  combating  infant  mortality. 
Henceforth  arose  what  is  known  as  the  Huddersfield  scheme,  a 
scheme  which  has  been  fruitful  in  splendid  results.     The  points 


THE    MOTHEK   AND    HER    CHILD.  29 

of  the  Huddersfield  scheme  are :  (1)  compulsory  notification  of 
births  within  forty-eight  hours;  (2)  the  appointment  of  lady 
assistant  medical  officers  of  help  to  visit  the  home,  inquire,  advise, 
and  assist;  (3)  the  organized  aid  of  voluntary  lady  workers  in 
subordination  to  the  municipal  part  of  the  scheme;  (4)  appeal 
to  the  medical  officer  of  help  when  the  baby,  not  being  under 
medical  care,  fails  to  thrive.  The  infantile  mortality  of 
Huddersfield  has  been  very  greatly  reduced  by  this  scheme.1 

The  Huddersfield  scheme  may  be  said  to  be  the  origin  of  the  Eng- 
lish Notification  of  Births  Act,  which  came  into  operation  in  1908.  This 
Act  represents,  in  England,  the  national  inauguration  of  a  scheme  for 
the  betterment  of  the  race,  the  ultimate  results  of  which  it  is  impossible 
to  foresee.  When  this  Act  comes  into  universal  action  every  baby  of 
the  land  will  be  entitled — legally  and  not  by  individual  caprice  or  phil- 
anthropic condescension — to  medical  attention  from  the  day  of  birth,  and 
every  mother  will  have  at  hand  the  counsel  of  an  educated  woman  in 
touch  with  the  municipal  authorities.  There  could  be  no  greater 
triumph  for  medical  science,  for  national  efficiency,  and  the  cause  of 
humanity  generally.  Even  on  the  lower  financial  plane,  it  is  easy  to  see 
that  an  enormous  saving  of  public  and  private  money  will  thus  be 
effected.  The  Act  is  adoptive,  and  not  compulsory.  This  was  a  wise 
precaution,  for  an  Act  of  this  kind  cannot  be  effectual  unless  it  is 
carried  out  thoroughly  by  the  community  adopting  it,  and  it  will  not 
be  adopted  until  a  community  has  clearly  realized  its  advantages  and 
the  methods  of  attaining  them. 

An  important  adjunct  of  this  organization  is  the  School  for 
Mothers.  Such  schools,  which  are  now  beginning  to  spring  up  every- 
where, may  be  said  to  have  their  origins  in  the  Consultations  de  Nour- 
rissons  (with  their  offshoot  the  Goutte  de  Lait),  established  by  Professor 
Budin  in  1892,  which  have  spread  all  over  France  and  been  widely 
influential  for  good.  At  the  Consultations  infants  are  examined  and 
weighed  weekly,  and  the  mothers  advised  and  encouraged  to  suckle  their 
children.  The  Gouttes  are  practically  milk  dispensaries  where  infants 
for  whom  breast-feeding  is  impossible  are  fed  with  milk  under  medical 
supervision.  Schools  for  Mothers  represent  an  enlargement  of  the  same 
scheme,  covering  a  variety  of  subjects  which  it  is  necessary  for  a  mother 
to  know.  Some  of  the  first  of  these  schools  were  established  at  Bonn, 
at  the  Bavarian  town  of  Weissenberg,  and  in  Ghent.     At  some  of  the 


i  "Infantile  Mortality:  The  Huddersfield  Scheme,"  British  Medical 
Journal,  Dec,  1907;  Samson  Moore,  "Infant  Mortality,"  ib.,  August 
29,  1908. 


30  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

Schools  for  Mothers,  and  notably  at  Ghent  (described  by  Mrs.  Bertrand 
Russell  in  the  Nineteenth  Century,  1906),  the  important  step  has  been 
taken  of  giving  training  to  young  girls  from  fourteen  to  eighteen;  they 
receive  instruction  in  infant  anatomy  and  physiology,  in  the  prepara- 
tion of  sterilized  milk,  in  weighing  children,  in  taking  temperatures  and 
making  charts,  in  managing  creches,  and  after  two  years  are  able  to 
earn  a  salary.  In  various  parts  of  England,  schools  for  young  mothers 
and  girls  on  these  lines  are  now  being  established,  first  in  London,  under 
the  auspices  of  Dr.  F.  J.  Sykes,  Medical  Officer  of  Health  for  St.  Pan- 
creas (see,  e.g.,  A  School  For  Mothers,  1908,  describing  an  establishment 
of  this  kind  at  Somers  Town,  with  a  preface  by  Sir  Thomas  Barlow;  an 
account  of  recent  attempts  to  improve  the  care  of  infants  in  London  will 
also  be  found  in  the  Lancet,  Sept.  26,  1908).  It  may  be  added  that  some 
English  municipalities  have  established  depots  for  supplying  mothers 
cheaply  with  good  milk.  Such  depots  are,  however,  likely  to  be  more 
mischievous  than  beneficial  if  they  promote  the  substitution  of  hand-feed- 
ing for  suckling.  They  should  never  be  established  except  in  connection 
with  Schools  for  Mothers,  where  an  educational  influence  may  be 
exerted,  and  no  mother  should  be  supplied  with  milk  unless  she  presents 
a  medical  certificate  showing  that  she  is  unable  to  nourish  her  child 
(Byers,  "Medical  Women  and  Public  Health  Questions,"  British  Medical 
Journal,  Oct.  6,  1906).  It  is  noteworthy  that  in  England  the  local 
authorities  will  shortly  be  empowered  by  law  to  establish  Schools  for 
Mothers. 

The  great  benefits  produced  by  these  institutions  in  France,  both  in 
diminishing  the  infant  mortality  and  in  promoting  the  education  of 
mothers  and  their  pride  and  interest  in  their  children,  have  been  set 
forth  in  two  Paris  theses  by  G.  Chaignon  [Organisation  des  Consulta- 
tions de  Nourrissons  a  la  Campagne,  1908),  and  Alcide  Alexandre  [Con- 
sultation de  Nourrissons  et  Goutte  de  Lait  d' Argues,  1908). 

The  movement  is  now  spreading  throughout  Europe,  and  an  Inter- 
national Union  has  been  formed,  including  all  the  institutions  specially 
founded  for  the  protection  of  child  life  and  the  promotion  of  puerieul- 
ture.  The  permanent  committee  is  in  Brussels,  and  a  Congress  of  Infant 
Protection  [Goutte  de  Lait)  is  held  every  two  years. 

It  will  be  seen  that  all  the  movements  now  being  set  in 
action  for  the  improvement  of  the  race  through  the  child  and 
the  child's  mother,  recognize  the  intimacy  of  the  relation  between 
the  mother  and  her  child  and  are  designed  to  aid  her,  even  if 
necessary  by  the  exercise  of  some  pressure,  in  performing  her 
natural  functions  in  relation  to  her  child.  To  the  theoretical 
philanthropist,  eager  to  reform  the  world  on  paper,  nothing  seems 


THE   MOTHER   AND   HER   CHILD.  31 

simpler  than  to  cure  the  present  evils  of  child-rearing  by  setting 
up  State  nurseries  which  are  at  once  to  relieve  mothers  of  every- 
thing connected  with  the  production  of  the  men  of  the  future 
beyond  the  pleasure — if  such  it  happens  to  be — of  conceiving 
them  and  the  trouble  of  bearing  them,  and  at  the  same  time  to 
rear  them  up  independently  of  the  home,  in  a  wholesome, 
economical,  and  scientific  manner.1  Nothing  seems  simpler,  but 
from  the  fundamental  psychological  standpoint  nothing  is  falser. 
The  idea  of  a  State  which  is  outside  the  community  is  but  a 
survival  in  another  form  of  that  antiquated  notion  which  com- 
pelled Louis  XIV  to  declare  "L'Etat  c'est  moi!"  A  State 
which  admits  that  the  individuals  composing  it  are  incompetent 
to  perform  their  own  most  sacred  and  intimate  functions,  and 
takes  upon  itself  to  perform  them  instead,  attempts  a  task  which 
would  be  undesirable,  even  if  it  were  possible  of  achievement.  It 
must  always  be  remembered  that  a  State  which  proposes  to 
relieve  its  constituent  members  of  their  natural  functions  and 
responsibilities  attempts  something  quite  different  from  the 
State  which  seeks  to  aid  its  members  to  fulfil  their  own 
biological  and  social  functions  more  adequately.  A  State  which 
enables  its  mothers  to  rest  when  they  are  child-bearing  is 
engaged  in  a  reasonable  task;  a  State  which  takes  over  its 
mothers'  children  is  reducing  philanthropy  to  absurdity.  It  is 
easy  to  realize  this  if  we  consider  the  inevitable  course  of  cir- 
cumstances under  a  system  of  "State-nurseries."  The  child 
would  be  removed  from  its  natural  mother  at  the  earliest  age, 
but  some  one  has  to  perform  the  mother's  duties;  the  substitute 
must  therefore  be  properly  trained  for  such  duties;  and  in 
exercising  them  under  favorable  circumstances  a  maternal  rela- 
tionship is  developed  between  the  child  and  the  "mother,"  who 
doubtless  possesses  natural  maternal  instincts  but  has  no  natural 

1  Ellen  Key  has  admirably  dealt  with  proposals  of  this  kind  ( as 
put  forth  by  C.  P.  Stetson)  in  her  Essays  "On  Love  and  Marriage."  In 
opposition  to  such  proposals  Ellen  Key  suggests  that  such  women  as 
have  been  properly  trained  for  maternal  duties  and  are  unable  entirely 
to  support  themselves  while  exercising  them  should  be  subsidized  by  the 
State  during  the  child's  first  three  years  of  life.  It  may  be  added  that 
in  Leipzig  the  plan  of  siibsidizing  mothers  who  (under  proper  medicn.l 
and  other  supervision)  suckle  their  infants  has  already  been  introduced. 


32  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

maternal  bond  to  the  child  she  is  mothering.  Such  a  relation- 
ship tends  to  become  on  both  sides  practically  and  emotionally  the 
real  relationship.  We  very  often  have  opportunity  of  seeing  how 
unsatisfactory  such  a  relationship  becomes.  The  artificial  mother 
is  deprived  of  a  child  she  had  begun  to  feel  her  own;  the 
child's  emotional  relationships  are  upset,  split  and  distorted; 
the  real  mother  has  the  bitterness  of  feeling  that  for  her 
child  she  is  not  the  real  mother.  Would  it  not  have  been  much 
better  for  all  if  the  State  had  encouraged  the  vast  army  of 
women  it  had  trained  for  the  position  of  mothering  other 
women's  children,  to  have,  instead,  children  of  their  own?  The 
women  who  are  incapable  of  mothering  their  own  children  could 
then  be  trained  to  refrain  from  bearing  them. 

Ellen  Key  (in  her  Century  of  the  Child,  and  elsewhere)  has  advo- 
cated for  all  young  women  a  year  of  compulsory  "service,"  analogous  to 
the  compulsory  military  service  imposed  in  most  countries  on  young 
men.  During  this  period  the  girl  would  be  trained  in  rational  house- 
keeping, in  the  principles  of  hygiene,  in  the  care  of  the  sick,  and  espe- 
cially in  the  care  of  infants  and  all  that  concerns  the  physical  and 
psychic  development  of  children.  The  principle  of  this  proposal  has 
since  been  widely  accepted.  Marie  von  Schmid  (in  her  Mutter dienst, 
1907)  goes  so  far  as  to  advocate  a  general  training  of  young  women  in 
such  duties,  carried  on  in  a  kind  of  enlarged  and  improved  midwifery 
school.  The  service  would  last  a  year,  and  the  young  woman  would  then 
be  for  three  years  in  the  reserves,  and  liable  to  be  called  up  for  duty. 
There  is  certainly  much  to  be  said  for  such  a  proposal,  considerably 
more  than  is  to  be  said  for  compulsory  military  service.  For  while  it 
is  very  doubtful  whether  a  man  will  ever  be  called  on  to  fight,  most 
women  are  liable  to  be  called  on  to  exercise  household  duties  or  to  look 
after  children,  whether  for  themselves  or  for  other  people. 


CHAPTER  II. 
SEXUAL  EDUCATION. 

Nurture  Necessary  as  Well  as  Breed — Precocious  Manifestations 
of  the  Sexual  Impulse — Are  They  to  be  Regarded  as  Normal? — The 
Sexual  Play  of  Children — The  Emotion  of  Love  in  Childhood — Are  Town 
Children  More  Precocious  Sexually  Than  Country  Children? — Children's 
Ideas  Concerning  the  Origin  of  Babies — Need  for  Beginning  the  Sexual 
Education  of  Children  in  Early  Years — The  Importance  of  Early  Train- 
ing in  Responsibility — Evil  of  the  Old  Doctrine  of  Silence  in  Matters  of 
Sex — The  Evil  Magnified  When  Applied  to  Girls — The  Mother  the 
Natural  and  Best  Teacher — The  Morbid  Influence  of  Artificial  Mystery 
in  Sex  Matters — Books  on  Sexual  Enlightenment  of  the  Young — Nature 
of  the  Mother's  Task — Sexual  Education  in  the  School — The  Value  of 
Botany — Zoology — Sexual  Education  After  Puberty — The  Necessity  of 
Counteracting  Quack  Literature — Danger  of  Neglecting  to  Prepare  for 
the  First  Onset  of  Menstruation — The  Right  Attitude  Towards  Woman's 
Sexual  Life — The  Vital  Necessity  of  the  Hygiene  of  Menstruation  Dur- 
ing Adolescence — Such  Hygiene  Compatible  with  the  Educational  and 
Social  Equality  of  the  Sexes — The  Invalidism  of  Women  Mainly  Due  to 
Hygienic  Neglect — Good  Influence  of  Physical  Training  on  Women  and 
Bad  Influence  of  Athletics — The  Evils  of  Emotional  Suppression — Need 
of  Teaching  the  Dignity  of  Sex — Influence  of  These  Factors  on  a 
Woman's  Fate  in  Marriage — Lectures  and  Addresses  on  Sexual  Hygiene 
— The  Doctor's  Part  in  Sexual  Education — Pubertal  Initiation  Into  the 
Ideal  World — The  Place  of  the  Religious  and  Ethical  Teacher — The 
Initiation  Rites  of  Savages  Into  Manhood  and  Womanhood — The  Sexual 
Influence  of  Literature — The  Sexual  Influence  of  Art. 

It  may  seem  to  some  that  in  attaching  weight  to  the  ancestry, 
the  parentage,  the  conception,  the  gestation,  even  the  first 
infancy,  of  the  child  we  are  wandering  away  from  the  sphere  of 
the  psychology  of  sex.  That  is  far  from  being  the  case.  We  are, 
on  the  contrary,  going  to  the  root  of  sex.  All  our  growing 
knowledge  tends  to  show  that,  equally  with  his  physical  nature, 
the  child's  psychic  nature  is  based  on  breed  and  nurture,  on  the 
quality  of  the  stocks  he  belongs  to,  and  on  the  care  taken  at  the 

3  (33) 


34  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

early  moments  when  care  counts  for  most,  to  preserve  the  fine 
quality  of  those  stocks. 

It  must,  of  course,  be  remembered  that  the  influences  of  both  breed 
and  nurture  are  alike  influential  on  the  fate  of  the  individual.  The 
influence  of  nurture  is  so  obvious  that  few  are  likely  to  under-rate  it. 
The  influence  of  breed,  however,  is  less  obvious,  and  we  may  still  meet 
with  persons  so  ill  informed,  and  perhaps  so  prejudiced,  as  to  deny  it 
altogether.  The  growth  of  our  knowledge  in  this  matter,  by  showing 
how  subtle  and  penetrative  is  the  influence  of  heredity,  cannot  fail  to 
dispel  this  mischievous  notion.  No  sound  civilization  is  possible  except 
in  a  community  which  in  the  mass  is  not  only  well-nurtured  but  well- 
bred.  And  in  no  part  of  life  so  much  as  in  the  sexual  relationships  is 
the  influence  of  good  breeding  more  decisive.  An  instructive  illustra- 
tion may  be  gleaned  from  the  minute  and  precise  history  of  his  early 
life  furnished  to  me  by  a  highly  cultured  Russian  gentleman.  He  was 
brought  up  in  childhood  with  his  own  brothers  and  sisters  and  a  little 
girl  of  the  same  age  who  had  been  adopted  from  infancy,  the  child  of  a 
prostitute  who  had  died  soon  after  the  infant's  birth.  The  adopted  child 
was  treated  as  one  of  the  family,  and  all  the  children  supposed  that  she 
was  a  real  sister.  Yet  from  early  years  she  developed  instincts  unlike 
those  of  the  children  with  whom  she  was  nurtured;  she  lied,  she  was 
cruel,  she  loved  to  make  mischief,  and  she  developed  precociously  vicious 
sexual  impulses;  though  carefully  educated,  she  adopted  the  occupation 
of  her  mother,  and  at  the  age  of  twenty-two  was  exiled  to  Siberia  for 
robbery  and  attempt  to  murder.  The  child  of  a  chance  father  and  a 
prostitute  mother  is  not  fatally  devoted  to  ruin;  but  siich  a  child  is 
ill-bred,  and  that  fact,  in  some  cases,  may  neutralize  all  the  influences 
of  good  nurture. 

When  we  reach  the  period  of  infancy  we  have  already  passed 
beyond  the  foundations  and  potentialities  of  the  sexual  life;  we 
are  in  some  cases  witnessing  its  actual  beginnings.  It  is  a 
well-established  fact  that  auto-erotic  manifestations  may  some- 
times be  observed  even  in  infants  of  less  than  twelve  months. 
We  are  not  now  called  upon  to  discuss  the  disputable  point  as  to 
how  far  such  manifestations  at  this  age  can  be  called  normal.1 
A  slight  degree  of  menstrual  and  mammary  activity  sometimes 


1  These  manifestations  have  been  dealt  with  in  the  study  of  Auto- 
erotism in  vol.  i  of  the  present  Studies.  It  may  be  added  that  the  sexual 
life  of  the  child  has  been  exhaustively  investigated  by  Moll,  Das  Sexual- 
leien  des  Kindes,  1909. 


SEXUAL    EDUCATION.  35 

occurs  afc  birth.1  It  seems  clear  that  nervous  and  psychic  sexual 
activity  has  its  first  springs  at  this  early  period,  and  as  the  years 
go  by  an  increasing  number  of  individuals  join  the  stream  until 
at  puberty  practically  all  are  carried  along  in  the  great  current. 

While,  therefore,  it  is  possibly,  even  probably,  true  that  the 
soundest  and  healthiest  individuals  show  no  definite  signs  of 
nervous  and  psychic  sexuality  in  childhood,  such  manifestations 
are  still  sufficiently  frequent  to  make  it  impossible  to  say  that 
sexual  hygiene  may  be  completely  ignored  until  puberty  is 
approaching. 

Precocious  physical  development  occurs  as  a  somewhat  rare  varia- 
tion. W.  Roger  Williams  ("Precocious  Sexual  Development  with 
Abstracts  of  over  One  Hundred  Cases,"  British  Gyncecological  Journal, 
May,  1902)  has  furnished  an  important  contribution  to  the  knowledge 
of  this  anomaly  which  is  much  commoner  in  girls  than  in  boys.  Roger 
Williams's  cases  include  only  twenty  boys  to  eighty  girls,  and  precocity 
is  not  only  more  frequent  but  more  pronounced  in  girls,  who  have  been 
known  to  conceive  at  eight,  while  thirteen  is  stated  to  be  the  earliest 
age  at  which  boys  have  proved  able  to  beget  children.  This,  it  may  be 
remarked,  is  also  the  earliest  age  at  which  spermatozoa  are  found  in  the 
seminal  fluid  of  boys;  before  that  age  the  ejaculations  contain  no  sper- 
matozoa, and,  as  Fiirbringer  and  Moll  have  found,  they  may  even  be 
absent  at  sixteen,  or  later.  In  female  children  precocious  sexual  devel- 
opment is  less  commonly  associated  with  general  increase  of  bodily 
development  than  in  boys.  (An  individual  case  of  early  sexual  develop- 
ment in  a  girl  of  five  has  been  completely  described  and  figured  in  the 
Zeitschrift  fur  Ethnologic,  1896,  Heft  4,  p.  262.) 

Precocious  sexual  impulses  are  generally  vague,  occasional,  and 
more  or  less  innocent.  A  case  of  rare  and  pronounced  character,  in 
which  a  child,  a  boy,  from  the  age  of  two  had  been  sexually  attracted 
to  girls  and  women,  and  directed  all  his  thoughts  and  actions  to  sexual 
attempts  on  them,  has  been  described  by  Herbert  Rich,  of  Detroit 
{Alienist  and  Neurologist,  Nov.,  1905).  General  evidence  from  the 
literature  of  the  subject  as  to  sexual  precocity,  its  frequency  and  signifi- 
cance, has  been  brought  together  by  L.  M.  Terman  ("A  Study  in  Pre- 
cocity," American  Journal  Psychology,  April,  1905). 


1  This  genital  efflorescence  in  the  sexual  glands  and  breasts  at 
birth  or  in  early  infancy  has  been  discussed  in  a  Paris  thesis,  by  Camille 
Renouf  [La  Crise  Genital  et  les  Manifestations  Connexes  chez  le  Foetus 
et  le  ~Nouveau-ne,  1905)  ;  he  is  unable  to  offer  a  satisfactory  explanation 
of  these  phenomena. 


36  PSYCHOLOGY    OP    SEX. 

The  erections  that  are  liable  to  occur  in  male  infants  have  usually 
no  sexual  significance,  though,  as  Moll  remarks,  they  may  acquire  it  by 
attracting  the  child's  attention;  they  are  merely  reflex.  It  is  believed 
by  some,  however,  and  notably  by  Freud,  that  certain  manifestations  of 
infant  activity,  especially  thumb-sucking,  are  of  sexual  causation,  and 
that  the  sexual  impulse  constantly  manifests  itself  at  a  very  early  age. 
The  belief  that  the  sexual  instinct  is  absent  in  childhood,  Freud  regards 
as  a  serious  error,  so  easy  to  correct  by  observation  that  he  wonders 
how  it  can  have  arisen.  "In  reality,"  he  remarks,  "the  new-born  infant 
brings  sexuality  with  it  into  the  world,  sexual  sensations  accompany  it 
through  the  days  of  lactation  and  childhood,  and  very  few  children  can 
fail  to  experience  sexual  activities  and  feelings  before  the  period  of 
puberty"  (Freud,  "Zur  Sexuellen  Aufklarung  der  Kinder,"  Soziale 
Medizin  und  Hygiene,  Bd.  ii,  1907;  cf.,  for  details,  the  same  author's 
Drei  Abhandhtngen  zur  Sexualtheorie,  1905).  Moll,  on  the  other  hand, 
considers  that  Freud's  views  on  sexuality  in  infancy  are  exaggerations 
which  must  be  decisively  rejected,  though  he  admits  that  it  is  difficult, 
if  not  impossible,  to  differentiate  the  feelings  in  childhood  (Moll,  Das 
Seocualleben  des  Kindes,  p.  154).  Moll  believes  also  that  psycho-sexual 
manifestations  appearing  after  the  age  of  eight  are  not  pathological; 
children  who  are  weakly  or  of  bad  heredity  are  not  seldom  sexually  pre- 
cocious, but,  on  the  other  hand,  Moll  has  known  children  of  eight  or 
nine  with  strongly  developed  sexual  impulses,  who  yet  become  finely 
developed  men. 

Rudimentary  sexual  activities  in  childhood,  accompanied  by  sexual 
feelings,  must  indeed — when  they  are  not  too  pronounced  or  too  prema- 
ture— be  regarded  as  coming  within  the  normal  sphere,  though  when 
they  occur  in  children  of  bad  heredity  they  are  not  without  serious 
risks.  But  in  healthy  children,  after  the  age  of  seven  or  eight,  they 
tend  to  produce  no  evil  results,  and  are  strictly  of  the  nature  of  play. 
Play,  both  in  animals  and  men,  as  Groos  has  shown  with  marvelous 
wealth  of  illustration,  is  a  beneficent  process  of  education;  the  young 
creature  is  thereby  preparing  itself  for  the  exercise  of  those  functions 
which  in  later  life  it  must  carry  out  more  completely  and  more  seri- 
ously. In  his  Spiele  der  Menschen,  Groos  applies  this  idea  to  the  sexual 
play  of  children,  and  brings  forward  quotations  from  literature  in  evi- 
dence. Keller,  in  his  "Romeo  und  Juliet  auf  dem  Dorfe,"  has  given  an 
admirably  truthful  picture  of  these  childish  love-relationships.  Emil 
Schultze-Malkowsky  (Geschlecht  und  GesellscJiaft,  Bd.  ii,  p.  370)  repro- 
duces some  scenes  from  the  life  of  a  little  girl  of  seven  clearly  illustrat- 
ing the  exact  nature  of  the  sexual  manifestation  at  this  age. 

A  kind  of  rudimentary  sexual  intercourse  between  children,  as 
Bloch  has  remarked  (Beitrage,  etc.,  Bd.  ii,  p.  254),  occurs  in  many  parts 
of  the  world,  and  is  recognized  by  their  elders  as  play.     This  is,  for 


SEXUAL     EDUCATION.  37 

instance,  the  case  among  the  Bawenda  of  the  Transvaal  (Zeitschrift  fiir 
Ethnologie,  1896,  Heft  4,  p.  364),  and  among  the  Papuans  of  Kaiser- 
Wilhelms-Land,  with  the  approval  of  the  parents,  although  much 
reticence  is  observed  {id.,  1889,  Heft  1,  p.  16).  Godard  (Egypte  et 
Palestine,,  1867,  p.  105)  noted  the  sexual  play  of  the  boys  and  girls  in 
Cairo.  In  New  Mexico  W.  A.  Hammond  (Sexual  Impotence,  p.  107) 
has  seen  boys  and  girls  attempting  a  playful  sexual  conjunction  with 
the  encouragement  of  men  and  women,  and  in  New  York  he  has  seen 
boys  and  girls  of  three  and  four  doing  the  same  in  the  presence  of  their 
parents,  with  only  a  laughing  rebuke.  "Playing  at  pa  and  ma"  is 
indeed  extremely  common  among  children  in  genuine  innocence,  and  with 
a  complete  absence  of  viciousness;  and  is  by  no  means  confined  to  chil- 
dren of  low  social  class.  Moll  remarks  on  its  frequency  (Libido 
Sexualis,  Bd.  i,  p.  277),  and  the  committee  of  evangelical  pastors,  in 
their  investigation  of  German  rural  morality  (Die  Geschlechtliche- 
sittliche  Verhaltnisse,  Bd.  i,  p.  102)  found  that  children  who  are  not 
yet  of  school  age  make  attempts  at  coitus.  The  sexual  play  of  children 
is  by  no  means  confined  to  father  and  mother  games;  frequently  there 
are  games  of  school  with  the  climax  in  exposure  and  smackings,  and 
occasionally  there  are  games  of  being  doctors  and  making  examinations. 
Thus  a  young  English  woman  says :  "Of  course,  when  we  were  at  school 
[at  the  age  of  twelve  and  earlier]  we  used  to  play  with  one  another, 
several  of  us  girls;  we  used  to  go  into  a  field  and  pretend  we  were 
doctors  and  had  to  examine  one  another,  and  then  we  used  to  pull  up 
one  another's  clothes  and  feet  each  other." 

These  games  do  not  necessarily  involve  the  cooperation  of  the 
sexual  impulse,  and  still  less  have  they  any  element  of  love.  But  emo- 
tions of  love,  scarcely  if  at  all  distinguishable  from  adult  sexual  love, 
frequently  appear  at  equally  early  ages.  They  are  of  the  nature  of  play, 
in  so  far  as  play  is  a  preparation  for  the  activities  of  later  life,  though, 
unlike  the  games,  they  are  not  felt  as  play.  Ramdohr,  more  than  a 
century  ago  (Venus  Urania,  1798),  referred  to  the  frequent  love  of  little 
boys  for  women.  More  usually  the  love  is  felt  towards  individuals  of 
the  opposite  or  the  same  sex  who  are  not  widely  different  in  age,  though 
usually  older.  The  most  comprehensive  study  of  the  matter  has  been 
made  by  Sanford  Bell  in  America  on  a  basis  of  as  many  as  2,300  eases 
(S.  Bell,  "A  Preliminary  Study  of  the  Emotion  of  Love  Between  the 
Sexes,"  American  Journal  Psychology,  July,  1902).  Bell  finds  that  the 
presence  of  the  emotion  between  three  and  eight  years  of  age  is  shown 
by  such  actions  as  hugging,  kissing,  lifting  each  other,  scuffling,  sitting 
close  to  each  other,  confessions  to  each  other  and  to  others,  talking  about 
each  other  when  apart,  seeking  each  other  and  excluding  the  rest,  grief 
at  separation,  giving  gifts,  showing  special  courtesies  to  each  other,  mak- 
ing sacrifices  for  each  other,  exhibiting  jealousy.     The  girls  are,  on  the 


38  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

whole,  more  aggressive  than  the  boys,  and  less  anxious  to  keep  the  mat- 
ter secret.  After  the  age  of  eight,  the  girls  increase  in  modesty  and 
the  boys  become  still  more  secretive.  The  physical  sensations  are  not 
usually  located  in  the  sexual  organs;  erection  of  the  penis  and  hyper- 
emia of  the  female  sexual  parts  Bell  regards  as  marking  undue  pre- 
cocity. But  there  is  diffused  vascular  and  nervous  tumescence  and  a 
state  of  exaltation  comparable,  though  not  equal,  to  that  experienced  in 
adolescent  and  adult  age.  On  the  whole,  as  Bell  soundly  concludes, 
"love  between  children  of  opposite  sex  bears  much  the  same  relation  to 
that  between  adults  as  the  flower  does  to  the  fruit,  and  has  about  as 
little  of  physical  sexuality  in  it  as  an  apple-blossom  has  of  the  apple 
that  develops  from  it."  Moll  also  (op.  cit.,  p.  76)  considers  that  kissing 
and  other  similar  superficial  contacts,  which  he  denominates  the  phe- 
nomena of  contrectation,  constitute  most  frequently  the  first  and  sole 
manifestation  of  the  sexual  impulse  in  childhood. 

It  is  often  stated  that  it  is  easier  for  children  to  preserve  their 
sexual  innocence  in  the  country  than  in  the  town,  and  that  only  in  cities 
is  sexuality  rampant  and  conspicuous.  This  is  by  no  means  true,  and 
in  some  respects  it  is  the  reverse  of  the  truth.  Certainly,  hard  work,  a 
natural  and  simple  life,  and  a  lack  of  alert  intelligence  often  combine 
to  keep  the  rural  lad  chaste  in  thought  and  act  until  the  period  of 
adolescence  is  completed.  Amnion,  for  instance,  states,  though  without 
giving  definite  evidence,  that  this  is  common  among  the  Baden  con- 
scripts. Certainly,  also,  all  the  multiple  sensory  excitements  of  urban 
life  tend  to  arouse  the  nervous  and  cerebral  excitability  of  the  young  at 
a  comparatively  early  age  in  the  sexual  as  in  other  fields,  and  promote 
premature  desires  and  curiosities.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  urban  life 
offers  the  young  no  gratification  for  their  desires  and  curiosities.  The 
publicity  of  a  city,  the  universal  surveillance,  the  studied  decorum  of  a 
population  conscious  that  it  is  continually  exposed  to  the  gaze  of 
strangers,  combine  to  spread  a  veil  over  the  esoteric  side  of  life,  which, 
even  when  at  last  it  fails  to  conceal  from  the  young  the  urban  stimuli 
of  that  life,  effectually  conceals,  for  the  most  part,  the  gratifications  of 
those  stimuli.  In  the  country,  however,  these  restraints  do  not  exist  in 
any  corresponding  degree;  animals  render  the  elemental  facts  of  sexual 
life  clear  to  all;  there  is  less  need  or  regard  for  decorum;  speech  is 
plainer;  supervision  is  impossible,  and  the  amplest  opportunities  for 
sexual  intimacy  are  at  hand.  If  the  city  may  perhaps  be  said  to  favor 
unchastity  of  thought  in  the  young,  the  country  may  certainly  be  said 
to  favor  unchastity  of  act. 

The  elaborate  investigations  of  the  Committee  of  Lutheran  pastors 
into  sexual  morality  (Die  G-escMeclitlich-sittliche  Verhaltnisse  vm 
Deutsehen  Reiche),  published  a  few  years  ago,  demonstrate  amply  the 
sexual  freedom  in  rural  Germany,  and  Moll,  who  is  decidedly  of  opinion 


SEXUAL    EDUCATION.  39 

that  the  country  enjoys  no  relative  freedom  from  sexuality,  states  (op. 
cit.,  pp.  137-139,  239)  that  even  the  circulation  of  obscene  books  and 
pictures  among  school-children  seems  to  be  more  frequent  in  small  towns 
and  the  country  than  in  large  cities.  In  Russia,  where  it  might  be 
thought  that  urban  and  rural  conditions  offered  less  contrast  than  in 
many  countries,  the  same  difference  has  been  observed.  "I  do  not 
know,"  a  Russian  correspondent  writes,  "whether  Zola  in  La  Terre  cor- 
rectly describes  the  life  of  French  villages.  But  the  ways  of  a  Russian 
village,  where  I  passed  part  of  my  childhood,  fairly  resemble  those 
described  by  Zola.  In  the  life  of  the  rural  population  into  which  I  was 
plunged  everything  was  impregnated  with  erotism.  One  was  surrounded 
by  animal  lubricity  in  all  its  immodesty.  Contrary  to  the  generally 
received  opinion,  I  believe  that  a  child  may  preserve  his  sexual  innocence 
more  easily  in  a  town  than  in  the  country.  There  are,  no  doubt,  many 
exceptions  to  this  rule.  But  the  functions  of  the  sexual  life  are  gen- 
erally more  concealed  in  the  towns  than  in  the  fields.  Modesty  (whether 
or  not  of  the  merely  superficial  and  exterior  kind)  is  more  developed 
among  urban  populations.  In  speaking  of  sexual  things  in  the  towns 
people  veil  their  thought  more;  even  the  lower  class  in  towns  employ 
more  restraint,  more  euphemisms,  than  peasants.  Thus  in  the  towns  a 
child  may  easily  fail  to  comprehend  when  risky  subjects  are  talked  of 
in  his  presence.  It  may  be  said  that  the  corruption  of  towns,  though 
more  concealed,  is  all  the  deeper.  Maybe,  but  that  concealment  pre- 
serves children  from  it.  The  town  child  sees  prostitutes  in  the  street 
every  day  without  distinguishing  them  from  other  people.  In  the  coun- 
try he  would  every  day  hear  it  stated  in  the  crudest  terms  that  such 
and  such  a  girl  has  been  found  at  night  in  a  barn  or  a  ditch  making 
love  with  such  and  such  a  youth,  or  that  the  servant  girl  slips  every 
night  into  the  coachman's  bed,  the  facts  of  sexual  intercourse,  pregnancy, 
and  childbirth  being  spoken  of  in  the  plainest  terms.  In  towns  the 
child's  attention  is  solicited  by  a  thousand  different  objects;  in  the 
country,  except  fieldwork,  which  fails  to  interest  him,  he  hears  only  of 
the  reproduction  of  animals  and  the  erotic  exploits  of  girls  and  youths. 
When  we  say  that  the  urban  environment  is  more  exciting  we  are  think- 
ing of  adults,  but  the  things  which  excite  the  adult  have  usually  no 
erotic  effect  on  the  child,  who  cannot,  however,  long  remain  asexual  when 
he  sees  the  great  peasant  girls,  as  ardent  as  mares  in  heat,  abandoning 
themselves  to  the  arms  of  robust  youths.  He  cannot  fail  to  remark 
these  frank  manifestations  of  sexuality,  though  the  subtle  and  perverse 
refinements  of  the  town  would  escape  his  notice.  I  know  that  in  the 
countries  of  exaggerated  prudery  there  is  much  hidden  corruption,  more, 
one  is  sometimes  inclined  to  think,  than  in  less  hypocritical  countries. 
But  I  believe  that  that  is  a  false  impression,  and  am  persuaded  that 
precisely  because  of  all  these  little  concealments  which  excite  the  mali- 


40  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

cious  amusement  of  foreigners,  there  are  really  many  more  young 
people  in  England  who  remain  chaste  than  in  the  countries  which 
treat  sexual  relations  more  frankly.  At  all  events,  if  I  have  known 
Englishmen  who  were  very  debauched  and  very  refined  in  vice,  I  have 
also  known  young  men  of  the  same  nation,  over  twenty,  who  were  as 
innocent  as  children,  hut  never  a  young  Frenchman,  Italian,  or 
Spaniard  of  whom  this  could  be  said."  There  is  undoubtedly  truth 
in  this  statement,  though  it  must  be  remembered  that,  excellent  as 
chastity  is,  if  it  is  based  on  mere  ignorance,  its  possessor  is  exposed 
to  terrible  dangers. 

The  question  of  sexual  hygiene,  more  especially  in  its  special 
aspect  of  sexual  enlightenment,  is  not,  however,  dependent  on  the 
fact  that  in  some  children  the  psychic  and  nervous  manifestation 
of  sex  appears  at  an  earlier  age  than  in  others.  It  rests  upon  the 
larger  general  fact  that  in  all  children  the  activity  of  intelligence 
begins  to  work  at  a  very  early  age,  and  that  this  activity  tends  to 
manifest  itself  in  an  inquisitive  desire  to  know  many  elementary 
facts  of  life  which  are  really  dependent  on  sex.  The  primary 
and  most  universal  of  these  desires  is  the  desire  to  know  where 
children  come  from.  No  question  could  be  more  natural;  the 
question  of  origins  is  necessarily  a  fundamental  one  in  childish 
philosophies  as,  in  more  ultimate  shapes,  it  is  in  adult  philoso- 
phies. Most  children,  either  guided  by  the  statements,  usually 
the  misstatements,  of  their  elders,  or  by  their  own  intelligence 
working  amid  such  indications  as  are  open  to  them,  are  in 
possession  of  a  theory  of  the  origin  of  babies. 

Stanley  Hall  ("Contents  of  Children's  Minds  on  Entering  School," 
Pedagogical  Seminary,  June,  1891)  has  collected  some  of  the  beliefs  of 
young  children  as  to  the  origin  of  babies.  "God  makes  babies  in  heaven, 
though  the  Holy  Mother  and  even  Santa  Claus  make  some.  He  lets 
them  down  and  drops  them,  and  the  women  or  doctors  catch  them,  or 
He  leaves  them  on  the  sidewalk,  or  brings  them  down  a  wooden  ladder 
backwards  and  pulls  it  up  again,  or  mamma  or  the  doctor  or  the  nurse 
go  up  and  fetch  them,  sometimes  in  a  balloon,  or  they  fly  down  and  lose 
off  their  wings  in  some  place  or  other  and  forget  it,  and  jump  down  to 
Jesus,  who  gives  them  around.  They  were  also  often  said  to  be  found 
in  flour-barrels,  and  the  flour  sticks  ever  so  long,  you  know,  or  they 
grew  in  cabbages,  or  God  puts  them  in  water,  perhaps  in  the  sewer,  and 
the  doctor  gets  them  out  and  takes  them  to  sick  folks  that  want  them, 


SEXUAL     EDUCATION.  41 

or  the  milkman  brings  them  early  in  the  morning;  they  are  dug  out  of 
the  ground,  or  bought  at  the  baby  store." 

In  England  and  America  the  inquisitive  child  is  often  told  that  the 
baby  was  found  in  the  garden,  under  a  gooseberry  bush  or  elsewhere;  or 
more  commonly  it  is  said,  with  what  is  doubtless  felt  to  be  a  nearer 
approach  to  the  truth,  that  the  doctor  brought  it.  In  Germany  the  com- 
mon story  told  to  children  is  that  the  stork  brings  the  baby.  Various 
theories,  mostly  based  on  folk-lore,  have  been  put  forward  to  explain 
this  story,  but  none  of  them  seem  quite  convincing  ( see,  e.g.,  G.  Herman, 
"Sexual-Mythen,"  Geschlecht  und  Gesellschaft,  vol.  i,  Heft  5,  1906,  p. 
176,  and  P.  Nacke,  Neurologische  Centralblatt,  No.  17,  1907).  Nacke 
thinks  there  is  some  plausibility  in  Professor  Petermann's  sugges- 
tion that  a  frog  writhing  in  a  stork's  bill  resembles  a  tiny  human 
creature. 

In  Iceland,  according  to  Max  Bartels  ( "Islandischer  Brauch  und 
Volksglaube,"  etc.,  Zeitschrift  fur  Ethnologie,  1900,  Heft  2  and  3)  we 
find  a  transition  between  the  natural  and  the  fanciful  in  the  stories  told 
to  children  of  the  origin  of  babies  (the  stork  is  here  precluded,  for  it 
only  extends  to  the  southern  border  of  Scandinavian  lands ) .  In  North 
Iceland  it  is  said  that  God  made  the  baby  and  the  mother  bore  it,  and 
on  that  account  is  now  ill.  In  the  northwest  it  is  said  that  God  made 
the  baby  and  gave  it  to  the  mother.  Elsewhere  it  is  said  that  God  sent 
the  baby  and  the  midwife  brought  it,  the  mother  only  being  in  bed  to 
be  near  the  baby  (which  is  seldom  placed  in  a  cradle).  It  is  also  some- 
times said  that  a  lamb  or  a  bird  brought  the  baby.  Again  it  is  said  to 
have  entered  during  the  night  through  the  window.  Sometimes,  how- 
ever, the  child  is  told  that  the  baby  came  out  of  the  mother's  breasts, 
or  from  below  her  breasts,  and  that  is  why  she  is  not  well. 

Even  when  children  learn  that  babies  come  out  of  the  mother's 
body  this  knowledge  often  remains  very  vague  and  inaccurate.  It  very 
commonly  happens,  for  instance,  in  all  civilized  countries  that  the  navel 
is  regarded  as  the  baby's  point  of  exit  from  the  body.  This  is  a  natural 
conclusion,  since  the  navel  is  seemingly  a  channel  into  the  body,  and  a 
channel  for  which  there  is  no  obvious  use,  while  the  pudendal  cleft 
would  not  suggest  itself  to  girls  (and  still  less  to  boys)  as  the  gate  of 
birth,  since  it  already  appears  to  be  monopolized  by  the  urinary  excre- 
tion. This  belief  concerning  the  navel  is  sometimes  preserved  through 
the  whole  period  of  adolescence,  especially  in  girls  of  the  so-called  edu- 
cated class,  who  are  too  well-bred  to  discuss  the  matter  with  their 
married  friends,  and  believe  indeed  that  they  are  already  sufficiently 
well  informed,  ilt  this  age  the  belief  may  not  be  altogether  harmless, 
in  so  far  as  it  leads  to  the  real  gate  of  sex  being  left  unguarded.  In 
Elsass  where  girls  commonly  believe,  and  are  taught,  that  babies  come 
through  the  navel,  popular  folk-tales  are  current  (Anthropophyteia,  vol. 


42  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

iii,  p.  89)    which  represent  the  mistakes  resulting  from  this  belief  as 
leading  to  the  loss  of  virginity. 

Freud,  who  believes  that  children  give  little  credit  to  the  stork 
fable  and  similar  stories  invented  for  their  mystification,  has  made  an 
interesting  psychological  investigation  into  the  real  theories  which  chil- 
dren themselves,  as  the  result  of  observation  and  thought,  reach  con- 
cerning the  sexual  facts  of  life  (S.  Freud,  "Ueber  Infantile  Sexual- 
theorien,"  Seocual-Probleme,  Dec,  1908).  Such  theories,  he  remarks, 
correspond  to  the  brilliant,  but  defective  hypotheses  which  primitive 
peoples  arrive  at  concerning  the  nature  and  origin  of  the  world.  There 
are  three  theories,  which,  as  Freud  quite  truly  concludes,  are  very  com- 
monly formed  by  children.  The  first,  and  the  most  widely  disseminated, 
is  that  there  is  no  real  anatomical  difference  between  boys  and 
girls;  if  the  boy  notices  that  his  little  sister  has  no  obvious  penis  he 
even  concludes  that  it  is  because  she  is  too  young,  and  the  little  girl 
herself  takes  the  same  view.  The  fact  that  in  early  life  the  clitoris  is 
relatively  larger  and  more  penis-like  helps  to  confirm  this  view  which 
Freud  connects  with  the  tendency  in  later  life  to  erotic  dream  of  women 
furnished  with  a  penis.  This  theory,  as  Freud  also  remarks,  favors  the 
growth  of  homosexuality  when  its  germs  are  present.  The  second 
theory  is  the  faecal  theory  of  the  origin  of  babies.  The  child,  who  per- 
haps thinks  his  mother  has  a  penis,  and  is  in  any  case  ignorant  of  the 
vagina,  concludes  that  the  baby  is  brought  into  the  Avorld  by  an  action 
analogous  to  the  action  of  the  bowels.  The  third  theory,  which  is  per- 
haps less  prevalent  than  the  others,  Freud  terms  the  sadistic  theory  of 
coitus.  The  child  realizes  that  his  father  must  have  taken  some  sort 
of  part  in  his  production.  The  theory  that  sexual  intercourse  consists 
in  violence  has  in  it  a  trace  of  truth,  but  seems  to  be  arrived  at  rather 
obscurely.  The  child's  own  sexual  feelings  are  often  aroused  for  the 
first  time  when  wrestling  or  struggling  with  a  companion;  he  may  see 
his  mother,  also,  resisting  more  or  less  playfully  a  sudden  caress  from 
his  father,  and  if  a  real  quarrel  takes  place,  the  impression  may  be 
fortified.  As  to  what  the  state  of  marriage  consists  in,  Freud  finds  that 
it  is  usually  regarded  as  a  state  which  abolishes  modesty;  the  most 
prevalent  theory  being  that  marriage  means  that  people  can  make  water 
before  each  other,  while  another  common  childish  theory  is  that  mar- 
riage is  when  people  can  show  each  other  their  private  parts. 

Thus  it  is  that  at  a  very  early  stage  of  the  child's  life  we  are 
brought  face  to  face  with  the  question  how  we  may  most  wisely 
begin  his  initiation  into  the  knowledge  of  the  great  central  facts 
of  sex.  It  is  perhaps  a  little  late  in  the  day  to  regard  it  as  a 
question,  but  so  it  is  among  us,  although  three  thousand  five 


SEXUAL     EDUCATION.  43 

hundred  years  ago,  the  Egyptian  father  spoke  to  his  child:  "T 
hare  given  yon  a  mother  who  has  carried  yon  "within  her,  a  he?  ~ 
burden,  for  your  sake,  and  without  resting  on  me.  When  at  last 
you  were  born,  she  indeed  submitted  herself  to  the  yoke,  for 
during  three  years  were  her  nipples  in  your  mouth.  Y 
excrements  never  turned  her  stomach,  nor  made  her  say,  'What 
am  I  doing?'  When  you  were  sent  to  school  she  went  regularly 
every  day  to  carry  the  household  bread  and  beer  to  your  mar:. . 
When  in  your  turn  you  marry  and  have  a  child,  bring  up  your 
child  as  your  mother  brought  you  up."1 

I  take  it  for  granted,  however,  that — whatever  doubt  there 
may  be  as  to  the  how  or  the  when — no  doubt  is  any  longer 
possible  as  to  the  absolute  necessity  of  taking  deliberate  and 
active  part  in  this  sexual  initiation,  instead  of  leaving  it  to  the 
chance  revelation  of  ignorant  and  perhaps  vicious  companions  or 
servants.  It  is  becoming  more  and  more  widely  felt  that  the 
risks  of  ignorant  innocence  are  too  great. 

"All  the  love  and  solicitude  parental  yearning  can  bestow/'"  writes 
Dr.  G.  F.  Butler,  of  Chicago  (Love  and  its  Affinities,  1899,  p.  83),  "all 
that  the  most  refined  religious  influence  can  offer,  all  that  the  most 
cultivated  associations  can  accomplish,  in  one  fatal  moment  may  be 
obliterated.  There  is  no  room  for  ethical  reasoning,  indeed  oftentimes 
no  consciousness  of  wrong,  but  only  Alargareirs  Ts  war  so  boss'/'  The 
same  writer  adds  (as  had  been  previously  remarked  by  Mrs.  Craik  and 
others)  that  among  church  members  it  is  the  finer  and  more  sensitive 
organizations  that  are  the  most  susceptible  to  sexual  emotions.  So  far 
as  boys  are  concerned,  we  leave  instruction  in  matters  of  sex,  the  most 
sacred  and  central  fact  in  the  world,  as  Canon  Lyttelton  remarks,  to 
"dirty-minded  school-boys,  grooms,  garden-boys,  anyone,  in  short,  who  at 
an  early  age  may  be  sufficiently  defiled  and  sufficiently  reckless  to  talk 
of  them."  And,  so  far  as  girls  are  concerned,  as  Balzac  long  ago 
remarked,  "a  mother  may  bring  up  her  daughter  severely,  and  cover 
her  beneath  her  wings  for  seventeen  years:  but  a  servant-girl  can 
destroy  that  long  work  by  a  word,  even  by  a  gesture." 

The  great  part  played  by  servant-girls  of  the  lower  class  in  the 
sexual  initiation  of  the  children  of  the  middle  class  has  been  illustrated 
in  dealing  with  "The  Sexual  Impulse  in  Women"  in  voL  iii,  of  these 


1  Amelineau,  La  Morale  des  Egyptians,  p.  6-L 


44  PSYCHOLOGY    OP    SEX. 

Studies,  and  need  not  now  be  further  discussed.  I  would  only  here  say 
a  word,  in  passing,  on  the  other  side.  Often  as  servant-girls  take  this 
part,  we  must  not  go  so  far  as  to  say  that  it  is  the  case  with  the 
majority.  As  regards  Germany,  Dr.  Alfred  Kind  has  lately  put  on 
record  his  experience :  "I  have  never,  in  youth,  heard  a  bad  or  improper 
word  on  sex-relationships  from  a  servant-girl,  although  servant-girls 
followed  one  another  in  our  house  like  sunshine  and  showers  in  April, 
and  there  was  always  a  relation  of  comradeship  between  us  children  and 
the  servants."  As  regards  England,  I  can  add  that  my  own  youthful 
experiences  correspond  to  Dr.  Kind's.  This  is  not  surprising,  for  one 
may  say  that  in  the  ordinary  well-conditioned  girl,  though  her  virtue 
may  not  be  developed  to  heroic  proportions,  there  is  yet  usually  a 
natural  respect  for  the  innocence  of  children,  a  natural  sexual  indiffer- 
ence to  them,  and  a  natural  expectation  that  the  male  should  take  the 
active  part  when  a  sexual  situation  arises. 

It  is  also  beginning  to  be  felt  that,  especially  as  regards 
women,  ignorant  innocence  is  not  merely  too  fragile  a  possession 
to  be  worth  preservation,  but  that  it  is  positively  mischievous, 
since  it  involves  the  lack  of  necessary  knowledge.  "It  is  little 
short  of  criminal,"  writes  Dr.  F.  M.  Goodchild,1  "to  send  our 
young  people  into  the  midst  of  the  excitements  and  temptations 
of  a  great  city  with  no  more  preparation  than  if  they  were  going 
to  live  in  Paradise."  In  the  case  of  women,  ignorance  has  the 
further  disadvantage  that  it  deprives  them  of  the  knowledge 
necessary  for  intelligent  sympathy  with  other  women.  The 
unsympathetic  attitude  of  women  towards  women  is  often  largely 
due  to  sheer  ignorance  of  the  facts  of  life.  "Why,"  writes  in  a 
private  letter  a  married  lady  who  keenly  realizes  this,  "are 
women  brought  up  with  such  a  profound  ignorance  of  their 
own  and  especially  other  women's  natures?  They  do  not  know 
half  as  much  about  other  women  as  a  man  of  the  most  average 
capacity  learns  in  his  day's  march."  We  try  to  make  up  for  our 
failure  to  educate  women  in  the  essential  matters  of  sex  by 
imposing  upon  the  police  and  other  guardians  of  public  order  the 
duty  of  protecting  women  and  morals.  But,  as  Moll  insists,  the 
real  problem  of  chastity  lies,  not  in  the  multiplication  of  laws 


1'The  Social  Evil  in  Philadelphia,"  Arena,  March,  1896. 


SEXUAL    EDUCATION.  45 

and  policemen,  but  largely  in  women's  knowledge  of  the  dangers 
of  sex  and  in  the  cultivation  of  their  sense  of  responsibility.1 
We  are  always  making  laws  for  the  protection  of  children  and 
setting  the  police  on  guard.  But  laws  and  the  police,  whether 
their  activities  are  good  or  bad,  are  in  either  case  alike  ineffectual. 
They  can  for  the  most  part  only  be  invoked  when  the  damage  is 
already  done.  We  have  to  learn  to  go  to  the  root  of  the  matter. 
We  have  to  teach  children  to  be  a  law  to  themselves.  We  have  to 
give  them  that  knowledge  which  will  enable  them  to  guard  their 
own  personalities.2  There  is  an  authentic  story  of  a  lady  who 
had  learned  to  swim,  much  to  the  horror  of  her  clergyman,  who 
thought  that  swimming  was  unfeminine.  "But/'  she  said, 
"suppose  I  was  drowning."  "In  that  case/'  he  replied,  "you 
ought  to  wait  until  a  man  comes  along  and  saves  you."  There 
we  have  the  two  methods  of  salvation  which  have  been  preached 
to  women,  the  old  method  and  the  new.  In  no  sea  have  women 
been  more  often  in  danger  of  drowning  than  that  of  sex.  There 
ought  to  be  no  question  as  to  which  is  the  better  method  of 
salvation. 

It  is  difficult  nowadays  to  find  any  serious  arguments  against  the 
desirability  of  early  sexual  enlightenment,  and  it  is  almost  with  amuse- 
ment that  we  read  how  the  novelist  Alphonse  Daudet,  when  asked  his 
opinion  of  such  enlightenment,  protested — in  a  spirit  certainly  common 
among  the  men  of  his  time — that  it  was  unnecessary,  because  boys  could 
learn  everything  from  the  streets  and  the  newspapers,  while  "as  to 
young  girls — no!  I  would  teach  them  none  of  the  truths  of  physiology. 
I  can  only  see  disadvantages  in  such  a  proceeding.  These  truths  are 
ugly,  disillusioning,  sure  to  shock,  to  frighten,  to  disgust  the  mind,  the 
nature,  of  a  girl."  It  is  as  much  as  to  say  that  there  is  no  need  to 
supply  sources  of  pure  water  when  there  are  puddles  in  the  street  that 
anyone  can  drink  of.  A  contemporary  of  Daudet's,  who  possessed  a  far 
finer  spiritual  insight,  Coventry  Patmore,  the  poet,  in  the  essay  on 
"Ancient  and  Modern  Ideas  of  Purity"  in  his  beautiful  book,  Religio 
PoettP,  had  already  finely  protested  against  that  "disease  of  impurity" 


1  Moll,  Kontrare  Seccualempfindung,  third  edition,  p.  592. 

2  This  powerlessness  of  the  law  and  the  police  is  well  recognized 
by  lawyers  familiar  with  the  matter.  Thus  F.  Werthauer  (Sittlich- 
Iceitsdelikte  der  Grosstadt,  1907)  insists  throughout  on  the  importance 
of  parents  and  teachers  imparting  to  children  from  their  early  years  a 
progressively  increasing  knowledge  of  sexual  matters. 


46  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

which  comes  of  "our  modern  undivine  silences"  for  which  Daudet 
pleaded.  And  Metchnikoff,  more  recently,  from  the  scientific  side,  speak- 
ing especially  as  regards  women,  declares  that  knowledge  is  so  indispen- 
sable for  moral  conduct  that  "ignorance  must  be  counted  the  most 
immoral  of  acts"   (Essais  Optimistes,  p.  420). 

The  distinguished  Belgian  novelist,  Camille  Lemonnier,  in  his 
L'Homme  en  Amour,  deals  with  the  question  of  the  sexual  education  of 
the  young  by  presenting  the  history  of  a  young  man,  brought  up  under 
the  influence  of  the  conventional  and  hypocritical  views  which  teach 
that  nudity  and  sex  are  shameful  and  disgusting  things.  In  this  way 
he  passes  by  the  opportunities  of  innocent  and  natural  love,  to  become 
hopelessly  enslaved  at  last  to  a  sensual  woman  who  treats  him  merely 
as  the  instrument  of  her  pleasure,  the  last  of  a  long  succession  of  lovers. 
The  book  is  a  powerful  plea  for  a  sane,  wholesome,  and  natural  educa- 
tion in  matters  of  sex.  It  was,  however,  prosecuted  at  Bruges,  in  1901, 
though  the  trial  finally  ended  in  acquittal.  Such  a  verdict  is  in  har- 
mony with  the  general  tendency  of  feeling  at  the  present  time. 

The  old  ideas,  expressed  by  Daudet,  that  the  facts  of  sex  are  ugly 
and  disillusioning,  and  that  they  shock  the  mind  of  the  young,  are  both 
alike  entirely  false.  As  Canon  Lyttelton  remarks,  in  urging  that  the 
laws  of  the  transmission  of  life  should  be  taught  to  children  by  the 
mother:  "The  way  they  receive  it  with  native  reverence,  truthfulness 
of  understanding  and  guileless  delicacy,  is  nothing  short  of  a  revelation 
of  the  never-ceasing  beauty  of  nature.  People  sometimes  speak  of  the 
indescribable  beauty  of  children's  innocence.  But  I  venture  to  say  that 
no  one  quite  knows  what  it  is  who  has  foregone  the  privilege  of  being 
the  first  to  set  before  them  the  true  meaning  of  life  and  birth  and  the 
mystery  of  their  own  being.  Not  only  do  we  fail  to  build  up  sound 
knowledge  in  them,  but  we  put  away  from  ourselves  the  chance  of  learn- 
ing something  that  must  be  divine."  In  the  same  way,  Edward  Car- 
penter, stating  that  it  is  easy  and  natural  for  the  child  to  learn  from 
the  first  its  physical  relation  to  its  mother,  remarks  (Love's  Coming  of 
Age,  p.  9)  :  "A  child  at  the  age  of  puberty,  with  the  unfolding  of  its 
far-down  emotional  and  sexual  nature,  is  eminently  capable  of  the  most 
sensitive,  affectional  and  serene  appreciation  of  what  sex  means  (gen- 
erally more  so  as  things  are  to-day,  than  its  worldling  parent  or 
guardian)  ;  and  can  absorb  the  teaching,  if  sympathetically  given,  with- 
out any  shock  or  disturbance  to  its  sense  of  shame — that  sense  which  is 
so  natural  and  valuable  a  safeguard  of  early  youth." 

How  widespread,  even  some  years  ago,  had  become  the  conviction 
that  the  sexual  facts  of  life  should  be  taught  to  girls  as  well  as  boys, 
was  shown  when  the  opinions  of  a  very  miscellaneous  assortment  of 
more  or  less  prominent  persons  were  sought  on  the  question  ("The  Tree 
of  Knowledge,"  New  Review,  June,  1894).    A  small  minority  of  two  only 


SEXUAL     EDUCATION.  47 

(Rabbi  Adler  and  Mrs.  Lynn  Lynton)  were  against  such  knowledge, 
while  among  the  majority  in  favor  of  it  were  Mme.  Adam,  Thomas 
Hardy,  Sir  Walter  Besant,  Bjornson,  Hall  Caine,  Sarah  Grand,  Nordau, 
Lady  Henry  Somerset,  Baroness  von  Suttner,  and  Miss  Willard.  The 
leaders  of  the  woman's  movement  are,  of  course,  in  favor  of  such  knowl- 
edge. Thus  a  meeting  of  the  Bund  fur  Mutterschutz  at  Berlin,  in  1905, 
almost  unanimously  passed  a  resolution  declaring  that  the  early  sexual 
enlightenment  of  children  in  the  facts  of  the  sexual  life  is  urgently 
necessary  (Mutterschutz,  1905,  Heft  2,  p.  91).  It  may  be  added  that 
medical  opinion  has  long  approved  of  this  enlightenment.  Thus  in  Eng- 
land it  was  editorially  stated  in  the  British  Medical  Journal  some  years 
ago  (June  9,  1894)  :  "Most  medical  men  of  an  age  to  beget  confidence 
in  such  affairs  will  be  able  to  recall  instances  in  which  an  ignorance, 
which  would  have  been  ludicrous  if  it  had  not  been  so  sad,  has  been 
displayed  on  matters  regarding  which  every  woman  entering  on  married 
life  ought  to  have  been  accurately  informed.  There  can,  we  think,  be 
little  doubt  that  much  unhappiness  and  a  great  deal  of  illness  would  be 
prevented  if  young  people  of  both  sexes  possessed  a  little  accurate  knowl- 
edge regarding  the  sexual  relations,  and  were  well  impressed  with  the 
profound  importance  of  selecting  healthy  mates.  Knowledge  need  not 
necessarily  be  nasty,  but  even  if  it  were,  it  certainly  is  not  comparable 
in  that  respect  with  the  imaginings  of  ignorance."  In  America,  also, 
where  at  an  annual  meeting  of  the  American  Medical  Association,  Dr. 
Denslow  Lewis,  of  Chicago,  eloquently  urged  the  need  of  teaching  sexual 
hygiene  to  youths  and  girls,  all  the  subsequent  nine  speakers,  some  of 
them  physicians  of  worldwide  fame,  expressed  their  essential  agreement 
(Medico-Legal  Journal,  June-Sept.,  1903).  Howard,  again,  at  the  end 
of  his  elaborate  History  of  Matrimonial  Institutions  (vol.  iii,  p.  257) 
asserts  the  necessity  for  education  in  matters  of  sex,  as  going  to  the 
root  of  the  marriage  problem.  "In  the  future  educational  programme," 
he  remarks,  "sex  questions  must  hold  an  honorable  place." 

While,  however,  it  is  now  widely  recognized  that  children 
are  entitled  to  sexual  enlightenment,  it  cannot  be  said  that  this 
belief  is  widely  put  into  practice.  Many  persons,  who  are  fully 
persuaded  that  children  should  sooner  or  later  be  enlightened 
concerning  the  sexual  sources  of  life,  are  somewhat  nervously 
anxious  as  to  the  precise  age  at  which  this  enlightenment  should 
begin.  Their  latent  feeling  seems  to  be  that  sex  is  an  evil,  and 
enlightenment  concerning  sex  also  an  evil,  however  necessary, 
and  that  the  chief  point  is  to  ascertain  the  latest  moment  to 
which  we  can  safely  postpone   this  necessary   evil.     Such   an 


48  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

attitude  is,  however,  altogether  wrong-headed.  The  child's 
desire  for  knowledge  concerning  the  origin  of  himself  is  a  per- 
fectly natural,  honest,  and  harmless  desire,  so  long  as  it  is  not 
perverted  by  being  thwarted.  A  child  of  four  may  ask  questions 
on  this  matter,  simply  and  spontaneously.  As  soon  as  the 
questions  are  put,  certainly  as  soon  as  they  become  at  all 
insistent,  they  should  be  answered,  in  the  same  simple  and 
spontaneous  spirit,  truthfully,  though  according  to  the  measure 
of  the  child's  intelligence  and  his  capacity  and  desire  for  knowl- 
edge. This  period  should  not,  and,  if  these  indications  are 
followed,  naturally  would  not,  in  any  case,  be  delayed  beyond 
the  sixth  year.  After  that  age  even  the  most  carefully  guarded 
child  is  liable  to  contaminating  communications  from  outside. 
Moll  points  out  that  the  sexual  enlightenment  of  girls  in  its 
various  stages  ought  to  be  always  a  little  ahead  of  that  of  boys, 
and  as  the  development  of  girls  up  to  the  pubertal  age  is  more 
precocious  than  that  of  boys,  this  demand  is  reasonable. 

If  the  elements  of  sexual  education  are  to  be  imparted  in 
early  childhood,  it  is  quite  clear  who  ought  to  be  the  teacher. 
There  should  be  no  question  that  this  privilege  belongs  by  every 
right  to  the  mother.  Except  where  a  child  is  artificially 
separated  from  his  chief  parent  it  is  indeed  only  the  mother 
who  has  any  natural  opportunity  of  receiving  and  responding  to 
these  questions.  It  is  unnecessary  for  her  to  take  any  initiative 
in  the  matter.  The  inevitable  awakening  of  the  child's  intelli- 
gence and  the  evolution  of  his  boundless  curiosity  furnish  her 
love  and  skill  with  all  opportunities  for  guiding  her  child's 
thoughts  and  knowledge.  Nor  is  it  necessary  for  her  to  possess 
the  slightest  technical  information  at  this  stage.  It  is  only 
essential  that  she  should  have  the  most  absolute  faith  in  the 
purity  and  dignity  of  her  physical  relationship  to  her  child,  and 
be  able  to  speak  of  it  with  frankness  and  tenderness.  When 
that  essential  condition  is  fulfilled  every  mother  has  all  the 
knowledge  that  her  young  child  needs. 

Among  the  best  authorities,  both  men  and  women,  in  all  the  coun- 
tries where  this  matter  is  attracting  attention,  there  seems  now  to  be 
unanimity  of  opinion  in  favor  of  the  elementary  facts  of  the  baby's  rela- 


SEXUAL     EDUCATION.  49 

tionship  to  its  mother  being  explained  to  the  child  by  the  mother  as 
soon  as  the  child  begins  to  ask  questions.  Thus  in  Germany  Moll  has 
repeatedly  argued  in  this  sense;  he  insists  that  sexual  enlightenment 
should  be  mainly  a  private  and  individual  matter;  that  in  schools  there 
should  be  no  general  and  personal  warnings  about  masturbation,  etc. 
(though  at  a  later  age  he  approves  of  instruction  in  regard  to  venereal 
diseases),  but  that  the  mother  is  the  proper  person  to  impart  intimate 
knowledge  to  the  child,  and  that  any  age  is  suitable  for  the  commence- 
ment of  such  enlightenment,  provided  it  is  put  into  a  form  fitted  for  the 
age  (Moll,  op.  cit.,  p.  264). 

At  the  Mannheim  meeting  of  the  Congress  of  the  German  Society 
for  Combating  Venereal  Disease,  when  the  question  of  sexual  enlighten- 
ment formed  the  sole  subject  of  discussion,  the  opinion  in  favor  of  early 
teaching  by  the  mother  prevailed.  "It  is  the  mother  who  must,  in  the 
first  place,  be  made  responsible  for  the  child's  clear  understanding  of 
sexual  things,  so  often  lacking,"  said  Frau  Krukenberg  (''Die  Aufgabe 
der  Mutter,"  Sexualpadagogik,  p.  13),  while  Max  Enderlin,  a  teacher, 
said  on  the  same  occasion  ("Die  Sexuelle  Frage  in  die  Volksschule,"  id., 
p.  35)  :  "It  is  the  mother  who  has  to  give  the  child  his  first  explana- 
tions, for  it  is  to  his  mother  that  he  first  naturally  comes  with  his 
questions."  In  England,  Canon  Lyttelton,  who  is  distinguished  among 
the  heads  of  public  schools  not  least  by  his  clear  and  admirable  state- 
ments on  these  questions,  states  {Mothers  and  Sons,  p.  99)  that  the 
mother's  part  in  the  sexual  enlightenment  and  sexual  guardianship  of 
her  son  is  of  paramount  importance,  and  should  begin  at  the  earliest 
years.  J.  H.  Badley,  another  schoolmaster  ("The  Sex  Difficulty,"  Broad 
Views,  June,  1904),  also  states  that  the  mother's  part  comes  first. 
Northcote  {Christianity  and  Sex  Problems,  p.  25)  believes  that  the  duty 
of  the  parents  is  primary  in  this  matter,  the  family  doctor  and  the 
schoolmaster  coming  in  at  a  later  stage.  In  America,  Dr.  Mary  Wood 
Allen,  who  occupies  a  prominent  and  influential  position  in  women's 
social  movements,  urges  (in  Child-Confidence  Rewarded,  and  other 
pamphlets)  that  a  mother  should  begin  to  tell  her  child  these  things  as 
soon  as  he  begins  to  ask  questions,  the  age  of  four  not  being  too  young, 
and  explains  how  this  may  be  done,  giving  examples  of  its  happy  results 
in  promoting  a  sweet  confidence  between  the  child  and  his  mother. 

If,  as  a  few  believe  should  be  the  case,  the  first  initiation  is 
delayed  to  the  tenth  year  or  even  later,  there  is  the  difficulty  that 
it  is  no  longer  so  easy  to  talk  simply  and  naturally  about  such 
things ;  the  mother  is  beginning  to  feel  too  shy  to  speak  for  the 
first  time  about  these  difficult  subjects  to  a  son  or  a  daughter 
who  is  nearly  as  big  as  herself.     She  feels  that  she  can  only  do  it 


50  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

awkwardly  and  ineffectively,  and  she  probably  decides  not  to  do  it 
at  all.  Thus  an  atmosphere  of  mystery  is  created  with  all  the 
embarrassing  and  perverting  influences  which  mystery  encourages. 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that,  more  especially  in  highly  intelligent 
children  with  vague  and  unspecialized  yet  insistent  sexual  impulses,  the 
artificial  mystery  with  which  sex  is  too  often  clothed  not  only  accen- 
tuates the  natural  curiosity  but  also  tends  to  favor  the  morbid  intensity 
and  even  prurience  of  the  sexual  impulse.  This  has  long  been  recog- 
nized. Dr.  Beddoes  wrote  at  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century: 
"It  is  in  vain  that  we  dissemble  to  ourselves  the  eagerness  with  which 
children  of  either  sex  seek  to  satisfy  themselves  concerning  the  confor- 
mation of  the  other.  No  degree  of  reserve  in  the  heads  of  families,  no 
contrivances,  no  care  to  put  books  of  one  description  out  of  sight  and  to 
garble  others,  has  perhaps,  with  any  one  set  of  children,  succeeded  in 
preventing  or  stifling  this  kind  of  curiosity.  No  part  of  the  history  of 
human  thought  would  perhaps  be  more  singular  than  the  stratagems 
devised  by  young  people  in  different  situations  to  make  themselves  mas- 
ters or  witnesses  of  the  secret.  And  every  discovery,  due  to  their  own 
inquiries,  can  but  be  so  much  oil  poured  upon  an  imagination  in  flames" 
(T.  Beddoes,  Hygeia,  1802,  vol.  iii,  p.  59).  Kaan,  again,  in  one  of  the 
earliest  books  on  morbid  sexuality,  sets  down  mystery  as  one  of  the 
causes  of  psycliopathia  sexualis.  Marro  [La  Puberta.,  p.  299)  points 
out  how  the  veil  of  mystery  thrown  over  sexual  matters  merely  serves 
to  concentrate  attention  on  them.  The  distinguished  Dutch  writer  Mul- 
tatuli,  in  one  of  his  letters  (quoted  with  approval  by  Freud),  remarks 
on  the  dangers  of  hiding  things  from  boys  and  girls  in  a  veil  of  mystery, 
pointing  out  that  this  must  only  heighten  the  curiosity  of  children,  and 
so  far  from  keeping  them  pure,  which  mere  ignorance  can  never  do, 
heats  and  perverts  their  imaginations.  Mrs.  Mary  Wood  Allen,  also, 
warns  the  mother  {op.  cit.,  p.  5)  against  the  danger  of  allowing  any 
air  of  embarrassing  mystery  to  creep  over  these  things.  "If  the  instruc- 
tor feels  any  embarrassment  in  answering  the  queries  of  the  child,  he  is 
not  fitted  to  be  the  teacher,  for  the  feeling  of  embarrassment  will,  in 
some  subtle  way,  communicate  itself  to  the  child,  and  he  will  experience 
an  indefinable  sense  of  offended  delicacy  which  is  both  unecessary  and 
undesirable.  Purification  of  one's  own  thought  is,  then,  the  first  step 
towards  teaching  the  truth  purely.  Why,"  she  adds,  "is  death,  the 
gateway  out  of  life,  any  more  dignified  or  pathetic  than  birth,  the  gate- 
way into  life?  Or  why  is  the  taking  of  earthly  life  a  more  awful  fact 
than  the  giving  of  life?"  Mrs.  Ennis  Kichmond,  in  a  book  of  advice  to 
mothers  which  contains  many  wise  and  true  things,  says:  "I  want  to 
insist,  more  strongly  than  upon  anything  else,  that  it  is  the  secrecy  that 


SEXUAL     EDUCATION.  51 

surrounds  certain  parts  of  the  body  and  their  functions  that  gives  them 
their  danger  in  the  child's  thought.  Little  children,  from  earliest  years, 
are  taught  to  think  of  these  parts  of  their  body  as  mysterious,  and  not 
only  so,  but  that  they  are  mysterious  because  they  are  unclean.  Chil- 
dren have  not  even  a  name  for  them.  If  you  have  to  speak  to  your 
child,  you  allude  to  them  mysteriously  and  in  a  half-whisper  as  'that 
little  part  of  you  that  you  don't  speak  of,'  or  words  to  that  effect. 
Before  everything  it  is  important  that  your  child  should  have  a  good 
working  name  for  these  parts  of  his  body,  and  for  their  functions,  and 
that  he  should  be  taught  to  use  and  to  hear  the  names,  and  that  as 
naturally  and  openly  as  though  he  or  you  were  speaking  of  his  head  or 
his  foot.  Convention  has,  for  various  reasons,  made  it  impossible  to 
speak  in  this  way  in  public.  But  you  can,  at  any  rate,  break  through 
this  in  the  nursery.  There  this  rule  of  convention  has  no  advantage, 
and  many  a  serious  disadvantage.  It  is  easy  to  say  to  a  child,  the  first 
time  he  makes  an  'awkward'  remark  in  public:  'Look  here,  laddie,  you 
may  say  what  you  like  to  me  or  to  daddy,  but,  for  some  reason  or  other, 
c>ne  does  not  talk  about  these'  (only  say  what  things)  'in  public'  Only 
let  your  child  make  the  remark  in  public  before  you  speak  (never  mind 
the  shock  to  your  caller's  feelings),  don't  warn  him  against  doing  so" 
(Ennis  Richmond,  Boyhood,  p.  60).  Sex  must  always  be  a  mystery,  but, 
as  Mrs.  Richmond  rightly  says,  "the  real  and  true  mysteries  of  genera- 
tion and  birth  are  very  different  from  the  vulgar  secretiveness  with 
which  custom  surrounds  them." 

The  question  as  to  the  precise  names  to  be  given  to  the  more  pri- 
vate bodily  parts  and  functions  is  sometimes  a  little  difficult  to  solve. 
Every  mother  will  naturally  follow  her  own  instincts,  and  probably  her 
own  traditions,  in  this  matter.  I  have  elsewhere  pointed  out  (in  the 
study  of  "The  Evolution  of  Modesty")  how  widespread  and  instinctive 
is  the  tendency  to  adopt  constantly  new  euphemisms  in  this  field.  The 
ancient  and  simple  words,  which  in  England  a  great  poet  like  Chaucer 
could  still  use  rightly  and  naturally,  are  so  often  dropped  in  the  mud 
by  the  vulgar  that  there  is  an  instinctive  hesitation  nowadays  in  apply- 
ing them  to  beautiful  uses.  They  are,  however,  unquestionably  the  best, 
and,  in  their  origin,  the  most  dignified  and  expressive  words.  Many 
persons  are  of  opinion  that  on  this  account  they  should  be  rescued  from 
the  mud,  and  their  sacredness  taught  to  children.  A  medical  friend 
writes  that  he  always  taught  his  son  that  the  vulgar  sex  names  are 
really  beautiful  words  of  ancient  origin,  and  that  when  we  understand 
them  aright  we  cannot  possibly  see  in  them  any  motive  for  low  jesting. 
They  are  simple,  serious  and  solemn  words,  connoting  the  most  central 
facts  of  life,  and  only  to  ignorant  and  plebeian  vulgarity  can  they  cause 
obscene  mirth.  An  American  man  of  science,  who  has  privately  and 
anonymously  printed  some  pamphlets  on  sex  questions,  also  takes  this 


52  PSYCHOLOGY    OE    SEX. 

view,  and  consistently  and  methodically  uses  the  ancient  and  simple 
words.  I  am  of  opinion  that  this  is  the  ideal  to  be  sought,  but  that 
there  are  obvious  difficulties  at  present  in  the  way  of  attaining  it.  In 
any  case,  however,  the  mother  should  be  in  possession  of  a  very  precise 
vocabulary  for  all  the  bodily  parts  and  acts  which  it  concerns  her  chil- 
dren to  know. 

It  is  sometimes  said  that  at  this  early  age  children  should 
not  be  told,  even  in  a  simple  and  elementary  form,  the  real  facts 
of  their  origin  but  should,  instead,  hear  a  fairy-tale  having  in  it 
perhaps  some  kind  of  symbolic  truth.  This  contention  may  be 
absolutely  rejected,  without  thereby,  in  any  degree,  denying  the 
important  place  which  fairy-tales  hold  in  the  imagination  of 
young  children.  Fairy-tales  have  a  real  value  to  the  child ;  they 
are  a  mental  food  he  needs,  if  he  is  not  to  be  spiritually  starved ; 
to  deprive  him  of  fairy-tales  at  this  age  is  to  do  him  a  wrong 
which  can  never  be  made  up  at  any  subsequent  age.  But  not 
only  are  sex  matters  too  vital  even  in  childhood  to  be  safely 
made  matter  for  a  fairy-tale,  but  the  real  facts  are  themselves 
as  wonderful  as  any  fairy-tale,  and  appeal  to  the  child's  imagina- 
tion with  as  much  force  as  a  fairy-tale. 

Even,  however,  if  there  were  no  other  reasons  against  telling 
children  fairy-tales  of  sex  instead  of  the  real  facts,  there  is  one 
reason  which  ought  to  be  decisive  with  every  mother  who  values 
her  influence  over  her  child.  He  will  very  quickly  discover, 
either  by  information  from  others  or  by  his  own  natural  intelli- 
gence, that  the  fairy-tale,  that  was  told  him  in  reply  to  a  question 
about  a  simple  matter  of  fact,  was  a  lie.  With  that  discovery 
his  mother's  influence  over  him  in  all  such  matters  vanishes  for 
ever,  for  not  only  has  a  child  a  horror  of  being  duped,  but  he  is 
extremely  sensitive  about  any  rebuff  of  this  kind,  and  never 
repeats  what  he  has  been  made  to  feel  was  a  mistake  to  be 
ashamed  of.  He  will  not  trouble  his  mother  with  any  more 
questions  on  this  matter;  he  will  not  confide  in  her;  he  will 
himself  learn  the  art  of  telling  "fairy-tales"  about  sex  matters. 
He  had  turned  to  his  mother  in  trust;  she  had  not  responded 
with  equal  trust,  and  she  must  suffer  the  punishment,  as 
Henriette  Fiirth  puts  it,  of  seeing  "the  love  and  trust  of  her  son 


SEXUAL     EDUCATION.  53 

stolen  from  her  by  the  first  boy  be  makes  friends  with  in  the 
street."  When,  as  sometimes  happens  (Moll  mentions  a  case), 
a  mother  goes  on  repeating  these  silly  stories  to  a  girl  or  boy  of 
seven  who  is  secretly  well-informed,  she  only  degrades  herself 
in  her  child's  eyes.  It  is  this  fatal  mistake,  so  often  made  by 
mothers,  which  at  first  leads  them  to  imagine  that  their  children 
are  so  innocent,  and  in  later  years  causes  them  many  hours  of 
bitterness  because  they  realize  they  do  not  possess  their  children's 
trust.  In  the  matter  of  trust  it  is  for  the  mother  to  take  the 
first  step;  the  children  who  do  not  trust  their  mothers  are,  for 
the  most  part,  merely  remembering  the  lesson  they  learned  at 
their  mother's  knee. 

The  number  of  little  books  and  pamphlets  dealing  with  the  ques- 
tion of  the  sexual  enlightenment  of  the  young — whether  intended  to  be 
read  by  the  young  or  offering  guidance  to  mothers  and  teachers  in  the 
task  of  imparting  knowledge — has  become  very  large  indeed  during 
recent  years  in  America,  England,  and  especially  Germany,  where  there 
has  been  of  late  an  enormous  production  of  such  literature.  The  late 
Ben  Elmy,  writing  under  the  pseudonym  of  "Ellis  Ethelmer,"  published 
two  booklets,  Baby  Buds,  and  The  Human  Flower  (issued  by  Mrs.  Wol- 
stenholme  Elmy,  Buxton  House,  Congleton),  which  state  the  facts  in  a 
simple  and  delicate  manner,  though  the  author  was  not  a  notably 
reliable  guide  on  the  scientific  aspects  of  these  questions.  A  charming 
conversation  between  a  mother  and  child,  from  a  French  source,  is 
reprinted  by  Edward  Carpenter  at  the  end  of  his  Love's  Coming  of  Age. 
How  We  Are  Born,  by  Mrs.  N.  J.  (apparently  a  Russian  lady  writing 
in  English),  prefaced  by  J.  H.  Badley,  is  satisfactory.  Mention  may 
also  be  made  of  The  Wonder  of  Life,  by  Mary  Tudor  Pole.  Margaret 
Morley's  Song  of  Life,  an  American  book,  which  I  have  not  seen,  has 
been  highly  praised.  Most  of  these  books  are  intended  for  quite  young 
children,  and  while  they  explain  more  or  less  clearly  the  origin  of  babies, 
nearly  always  starting  with  the  facts  of  plant  life,  they  touch  very 
slightly,  if  at  all,  on  the  relations  of  the  sexes. 

Mrs.  Ennis  Richmond's  books,  largely  addressed  to  mothers,  deal 
with  these  questions  in  a  very  sane,  direct,  and  admirable  manner,  and 
Canon  Lyttelton's  books,  discussing  svich  questions  generally,  are  also 
excellent.  Most  of  the  books  now  to  be  mentioned  are  intended  to  be 
read  by  boys  and  girls  who  have  reached  the  age  of  puberty.  They  refer 
more  or  less  precisely  to  sexual  relationships,  and  they  usually  touch 
on  masturbation.  The  Story  of  Life,  written  by  a  very  accomplished 
woman,  the  late  Ellice  Hopkins,  is  somewhat  vague,  and  introduces  too 


54  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

many  exalted  religious  ideas.  Arthur  Trewby's  Healthy  Boyhood  is  a 
little  book  of  wholesome  tendency;  it  deals  specially  with  masturbation. 
A  Talk  with  Boys  About  Themselves  and  A  Talk  with  Girls  About 
Themselves,  both  by  Edward  Bruce  Kirk  (the  latter  book  written  in 
conjunction  with  a  lady)  deal  with  general  as  well  as  sexual  hygiene. 
There  could  be  no  better  book  to  put  into  the  hands  of  a  boy  or  girl  at 
puberty  than  M.  A.  Warren's  Almost  Fourteen,  written  by  an  American 
school  teacher  in  1892.  It  was  a  most  charming  and  delicately  written 
book,  which  could  not  have  offended  the  innocence  of  the  most  sensitive 
maiden.  Nothing,  however,  is  sacred  to  prurience,  and  it  was  easy  for 
the  prurient  to  capture  the  law  and  obtain  (in  1897)  legal  condemna- 
tion of  this  book  as  "obscene."  Anything  which  sexually  excites  a 
prurient  mind  is,  it  is  true,  "obscene"  for  that  mind,  for,  as  Mr.  Theo- 
dore Schroeder  remarks,  obscenity  is  "the  contribution  of  the  reading 
mind,"  but  we  need  such  books  as  this  in  order  to  diminish  the  number 
of  prurient  minds,  and  the  condemnation  of  so  entirely  admirable  a  boob 
makes,  not  for  morality,  but  for  immorality.  I  am  told  that  the  book 
was  subsequently  issued  anew  with  most  of  its  best  portions  omitted, 
and  it  is  stated  by  Schroeder  {Liberty  of  Speech  and  Press  Essential  to 
Purity  Propaganda,  p.  34)  that  the  author  was  compelled  to  resign  his 
position  as  a  public  school  principal.  Maria  Lischnewska's  Geschlechi- 
liche  Belehrung  der  Kinder  (reprinted  from  Mutterschuts,  1905,  Heft 
4  and  5)  is  a  most  admirable  and  thorough  discussion  of  the  whole 
question  of  sexual  education,  though  the  writer  is  more  interested  ia 
the  teacher's  share  in  this  question  than  in  the  mother's.  Suggestions 
to  mothers  are  contained  in  Hugo  Salus,  Wo  kommen  die  Kinder  her/, 
E.  Stiehl,  Eine  Mutter pficht,  and  many  other  books.  Dr.  Alfred  Kind 
strongly  recommends  Ludwig  Gurlitt's  Der  Verkehr  mit  meinem  Kin- 
dern,  more  especially  in  its  combination  of  sexual  education  with  artistic 
education.  Many  similar  books  are  referred  to  by  Bloch,  in  his  Sexual 
Life  of  Our  Time,  Ch.  xxvi. 

I  have  enumerated  the  names  of  these  little  books  because  they  are 
frequently  issued  in  a  semi-private  manner,  and  are  seldom  easy  to  pro- 
cure or  to  hear  of.  The  propagation  of  such  books  seems  to  be  felt  to 
be  almost  a  disgraceful  action,  only  to  be  performed  by  stealth.  And 
such  a  feeling  seems  not  unnatural  when  we  see,  as  in  the  case  of  the 
author  of  Almost  Fourteen,  that  a  nominally  civilized  country,  instead 
of  loading  with  honors  a  man  who  has  worked  for  its  moral  and  physical 
welfare,  seeks  so  far  as  it  can  to  ruin  him. 

I  may  add  that  while  it  would  usually  be  very  helpful  to  a  mother 
to  be  acquainted  with  a  few  of  the  booklets  I  have  named,  she  would  da 
well,  in  actually  talking  to  her  children,  to  rely  mainly  on  her  own 
knowledge  and  inspiration. 


SEXUAL     EDUCATION".  55 

The  sexual  education  which  it  is  the  mother's  duty  and 
privilege  to  initiate  during  her  child's  early  years  cannot  and 
ought  not  to  be  technical.  It  is  not  of  the  nature  of  formal 
instruction  but  is  a  private  and  intimate  initiation.  No  doubt 
the  mother  must  herself  be  taught.1  But  the  education  she 
needs  is  mainly  an  education  in  love  and  insight.  The  actual 
facts  which  she  requires  to  use  at  this  early  stage  are  very  simple. 
Her  main  task  is  to  make  clear  the  child's  own  intimate  relations 
to  herself  and  to  show  that  all  young  things  have  a  similar 
intimate  relation  to  their  mothers ;  in  generalizing  on  this  point 
the  egg  is  the  simplest  and  most  fundamental  type  to  explain  the 
origin  of  the  individual  life,  for  the  idea  of  the  egg — in  its  widest 
sense  as  the  seed — not  only  has  its  truth  for  the  human  creature 
but  may  be  applied  throughout  the  animal  and  vegetable  world. 
In  this  explanation  the  child's  physical  relationship  to  his  father 
is  not  necessarily  at  first  involved;  it  may  be  left  to  a  further 
stage  or  until  the  child's  questions  lead  up  to  it. 

Apart  from  his  interest  in  his  origin,  the  child  is  also 
interested  in  his  sexual,  or  as  they  seem  to  him  exclusively,  his 
excretory  organs,  and  in  those  of  other  people,  his  sisters  and 
parents.  On  these  points,  at  this  age,  his  mother  may  simply 
and  naturally  satisfy  his  simple  and  natural  curiosity,  calling 
things  by  precise  names,  whether  the  names  used  are  common  or 
uncommon  being  a  matter  in  regard  to  which  she  may  exercise 
her  judgment  and  taste.  In  this  manner  the  mother  will, 
indirectly,  be  able  to  safeguard  her  child  at  the  outset  against  the 
prudish  and  prurient  notions  alike  which  he  will  encounter  later. 
She  will  also  without  unnatural  stress  be  able  to  lead  the  child 
into  a  reverential  attitude  towards  his  own  organs  and  so  exert 
an  influence  against  any  undesirable  tampering  with  them.  In 
talking  with  him  about  the  origin  of  life  and  about  his  own  body 
and  functions,  in  however  elementary  a  fashion,  she  will  have 
initiated  him  both  in  sexual  knowledge  and  in  sexual  hygiene. 


1  "Parents  must  be  taught  how  to  impart  information,"  remarks 
E.  L.  Keyes  ("Education  upon  Sexual  Matters,"  New  York  Medical 
Journal,  Feb.  10,  1906),  "and  this  teaching  of  the  parent  should  begin 
when  he  is  himself  a  child," 


56  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

The  mother  who  establishes  a  relationship  of  confidence  with 
her  child  during  these  first  years  will  probably,  if  she  possesses 
any  measure  of  wisdom  and  tact,  be  able  to  preserve  it  even  after 
the  epoch  of  puberty  into  the  difficult  years  of  adolescence.  But 
as  an  educator  in  the  narrower  sense  her  functions  will,  in  most 
cases,  end  at  or  before  puberty.  A  somewhat  more  technical  and 
completely  impersonal  acquaintance  with  the  essential  facts  of  sex 
then  becomes  desirable,  and  this  would  usually  be  supplied  by 
the  school. 

The  great  though  capricious  educator,  Basedow,  to  some  extent  a 
pupil  of  Rousseau,  was  an  early  pioneer  in  both  the  theory  and  the 
practice  of  giving  school  children  instruction  in  the  facts  of  the  sexual 
life,  from  the  age  of  ten  onwards.  He  insists  much  on  this  subject  in 
his  great  treatise,  the  ElementarwerJc  (1770-1774).  The  questions  of 
children  are  to  be  answered  truthfully,  he  states,  and  they  must  be 
taught  never  to  jest  at  anything  so  sacred  and  serious  as  the  sexual 
relations.  They  are  to  be  shown  pictures  of  childbirth,  and  the  dangers 
of  sexual  irregularities  are  to  be  clearly  expounded  to  them  at  the  outset. 
Boys  are  to  be  taken  to  hospitals  to  see  the  results  of  venereal  disease. 
Basedow  is  aware  that  many  parents  and  teachers  will  be  shocked  at 
his  insistence  on  these  things  in  his  books  and  in  his  practical  peda- 
gogic work,  but  such  people,  he  declares,  ought  to  be  shocked  at  the 
Bible  (see,  e.g.,  Pinloche,  La  Reforme  de  V Education  en  Allemagne  au 
dixhuitieme  siecle:  Basedow  et  le  Philanthropinisme,  pp.  125,  256,  260, 
272).  Basedow  was  too  far  ahead  of  his  own  time,  and  even  of  ours, 
to  exert  much  influence  in  this  matter,  and  he  had  few  immediate 
imitators. 

Somewhat  later  than  Basedow,  a  distinguished  English  physician, 
Thomas  Beddoes,  worked  on  somewhat  the  same  lines,  seeking  to  promote 
sexual  knowledge  by  lectures  and  demonstrations.  In  his  remarkable 
book,  Eygeia,  published  in  1802  (vol.  i,  Essay  IV)  he  sets  forth  the 
absurdity  of  the  conventional  requirement  that  "discretion  and  ignorance 
should  lodge  in  the  same  bosom,"  and  deals  at  length  with  the  question 
of  masturbation  and  the  need  of  sexual  education.  He  insists  on  the 
great  importance  of  lectures  on  natural  history  which,  he  had  found, 
could  be  given  with  perfect  propriety  to  a  mixed  audience.  His  experi- 
ences had  shown  that  botany,  the  amphibia,  the  hen  and  her  eggs,  human 
anatomy,  even  disease  and  sometimes  the  sight  of  it,  are  salutary  from 
this  point  of  view.  He  thinks  it  is  a  happy  thing  for  a  child  to  gain 
his  first  knowledge  of  sexual  difference  from  anatomical  subjects,  the 
dignity  of  death  being  a  noble  prelude  to  the  knowledge  of  sex  and 


SEXUAL     EDUCATION.  57 

depriving  it  forever  of  morbid  prurience.  It  is  scarcely  necessary  to 
remark  that  this  method  of  teaching  children  the  elements  of  sexual 
anatomy  in  the  post-mortem  room  has  not  found  many  advocates  or 
followers;  it  is  undesirable,  for  it  fails  to  take  into  account  the  sensi- 
tiveness of  children  to  such  impressions,  and  it  is  unnecessary,  for  it  is 
just  as  easy  to  teach  the  dignity  of  life  as  the  dignity  of  death. 

The  duty  of  the  school  to  impart  education  in  matters  of  sex  to 
children  has  in  recent  years  been  vigorously  and  ably  advocated  by 
Maria  Lischnewska  (op.  cit.),  who  speaks  with  thirty  years'  experience 
as  a  teacher  and  an  intimate  acquaintance  with  children  and  their  home 
life.  She  argues  that  among  the  mass  of  the  population  to-day,  while 
in  the  home-life  there  is  every  opportunity  for  coarse  familiarity  with 
sexual  matters,  there  is  no  opportunity  for  a  pure  and  enlightened  intro- 
duction to  them,  parents  being  for  the  most  part  both  morally  and 
intellectually  incapable  of  aiding  their  children  here.  That  the  school 
should  assume  the  leading  part  in  this  task  is,  she  believes,  in  accord- 
ance with  the  whole  tendency  of  modern  civilized  life.  She  would  have 
the  instruction  graduated  in  such  a  manner  that  during  the  fifth  or 
sixth  year  of  school  life  the  pupil  would  receive  instruction,  with  the 
aid  of  diagrams,  concerning  the  sexual  organs  and  functions  of  the 
higher  mammals,  the  bull  and  cow  being  selected  by  preference.  The 
facts  of  gestation  would  of  course  be  included.  When  this  stage  was 
reached  it  would  be  easy  to  pass  on  to  the  human  species  with  the  state- 
ment: "Just  in  the  same  way  as  the  calf  develops  in  the  cow  so  the 
child  develops  in  the  mother's  body." 

It  is  difficult  not  to  recognize  the  force  of  Maria  Lischnewska's 
argument,  and  it  seems  highly  probable  that,  as  she  asserts,  the  instruc- 
tion proposed  lies  in  the  course  of  our  present  path  of  progress.  Such 
instruction  would  be  formal,  unemotional,  ::nd  impersonal;  it  would  be 
given  not  as  specific  instruction  in  matters  of  sex,  but  simply  as  a  part 
of  natural  history.  It  would  supplement,  so  far  as  mere  knowledge  is 
concerned,  the  information  the  child  had  already  received  from  its 
mother.  But  it  would  by  no  means  supplant  or  replace  the  personal 
and  intimate  relationship  of  confidence  between  mother  and  child.  That 
is  always  to  be  aimed  at,  and  though  it  may  not  be  possible  among  the 
ill-educated  masses  of  to-day,  nothing  else  will  adequately  take  its  place. 

There  can  be  no  doubt,  however,  that  while  in  the  future 
the  school  will  most  probably  be  regarded  as  the  proper  place  in 
which  to  teach  the  elements  of  physiology — and  not  as  at  present 
a  merely  emasculated  and  effeminated  physiology — the  intro- 
duction of  such  reformed  teaching  is  as  yet  impracticable  in  many 
communities.     A  coarse  and  ill-bred  community  moves  in  a 


58  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

vicious  circle.  Its  members  are  brought  up  to  believe  that  sex 
matters  are  filthy,  and  when  they  become  adults  they  protest 
violently  against  their  children  being  taught  this  filthy  knowl- 
edge. The  teacher's  task  is  thus  rendered  at  the  best  difficult, 
and  under  democratic  conditions  impossible.  We  cannot,  there- 
fore, hope  for  any  immediate  introduction  of  sexual  physiology 
into  schools,  even  in  the  unobtrusive  form  in  which  alone  it 
could  properly  be  introduced,  that  is  to  say  as  a  natural  and 
inevitable  part  of  general  physiology. 

This  objection  to  animal  physiology  by  no  means  applies, 
however,  to  botany.  There  can  be  little  doubt  that  botany  is  of 
all  the  natural  sciences  that  which  best  admits  of  this  incidental 
instruction  in  the  fundamental  facts  of  sex,  when  we  are  con- 
cerned with  children  below  the  age  of  puberty.  There  are  at  least 
two  reasons  why  this  should  be  so.  In  the  first  place  botany 
really  presents  the  beginnings  of  sex,  in  their  most  naked  and 
essential  forms;  it  makes  clear  the  nature,  origin,  and  sig- 
nificance of  sex.  In  the  second  place,  in  dealing  with  plants  the 
facts  of  sex  can  be  stated  to  children  of  either  sex  or  any  age 
quite  plainly  and  nakedly  without  any  reserve,  for  no  one  now- 
adays regards  the  botanical  facts  of  sex  as  in  any  way  offensive. 
The  expounder  of  sex  in  plants  also  has  on  his  side  the  advantage 
of  being  able  to  assert,  without  question,  the  entire  beauty  of  the 
sexual  process.  He  is  not  confronted  by  the  ignorance,  bad 
education,  and  false  associations  which  have  made  it  so  difficult 
either  to  see  or  to  show  the  beauty  of  sex  in  animals.  From 
the  sex-life  of  plants  to  the  sex-life  of  the  lower  animals  there 
is,  however,  but  a  step  which  the  teacher,  according  to  his  dis- 
cretion, may  take. 

An  early  educational  authority,  Salzmann,  in  1785  advocated  the 
sexual  enlightenment  of  children  by  first  teaching  them  botany,  to  be 
followed  by  zoology.  In  modern  times  the  method  of  imparting  sex 
knowledge  to  children  by  means,  in  the  first  place,  of  botany,  has  been 
generally  advocated,  and  from  the  most  various  quarters.  Thus  Marro 
(La  Puberta,  p.  300)  recomends  this  plan.  J.  Hudrey-Menos  ("La 
Question  du  Sexe  dans  l'Education,"  Revue  Bocialiste,  June,  1895),  gives 
the  same  advice.  Rudolf  Sommer,  in  a  paper  entitled  "Miidchenerzieh- 
ung  oder  Menschenbildung ?"      (GescMecht  und  Gesselschaft,  Jahrgang 


SEXUAL     EDUCATION.  59 

I,  Heft  3)  recommends  that  the  first  introduction  of  sex  knowledge  to 
children  should  be  made  by  talking  to  them  on  simple  natural  history 
subjects;  "there  are  endless  opportunities,"  he  remarks,  "over  a  fairy- 
tale, or  a  walk,  or  a  fruit,  or  an  egg,  the  sowing  of  seed  or  the  nest- 
building  of  birds."  Canon  Lyttelton  (Training  of  the  Young  in  Laws 
of  Sex,  pp.  74  et  seq.)  advises  a  somewhat  similar  method,  though  lay- 
ing chief  stress  on  personal  confidence  between  the  child  and  his  mother ; 
"reference  is  made  to  the  animal  world  just  so  far  as  the  child's  knowl- 
edge extends,  so  as  to  prevent  the  new  facts  from  being  viewed  in  isola- 
tion, but  the  main  emphasis  is  laid  on  his  feeling  for  his  mother  and 
the  instinct  which  exists  in  nearly  all  children  of  reverence  due  to  the 
maternal  relation;"  he  adds  that,  however  difficult  the  subject  may 
seem,  the  essential  facts  of  paternity  must  also  be  explained  to  boys  and 
girls  alike.  Keyes,  again  {New  York  Medical  Journal,  Feb.  10,  1906), 
advocates  teaching  children  from  an  early  age  the  sexual  facts  of  plant 
life  and  also  concerning  insects  and  other  lower  animals,  and  so  grad- 
ually leading  up  to  human  beings,  the  matter  being  thus  robbed  of  its 
unwholesome  mystery.  Mrs.  Ennis  Richmond  {Boyhood,  p.  62)  recom- 
mends that  children  should  be  sent  to  spend  some  of  their  time  upon  a 
farm,  so  that  they  may  not  only  become  acquainted  with  the  general 
facts  of  the  natural  world,  but  also  with  the  sexual  lives  of  animals', 
learning  things  which  it  is  difficult  to  teach  verbally.  Karina  Karin 
("Wie  erzieht  man  ein  Kind  zur  wissenden  Keuschheit?"  Geschlecht  und 
Gesellschaft,  Jahrgang  I,  Heft  4),  reproducing  some  of  her  talks  with 
her  nine-year  old  son,  from  the  time  that  he  first  asked  her  where  chil- 
dren came  from,  shows  how  she  began  with  telling  him  about  flowers,  to 
pass  on  to  fish  and  birds,  and  finally  to  the  facts  of  human  pregnancy, 
showing  him  pictures  from  an  obstetrical  manual  of  the  child  in  its 
mother's  body.  It  may  be  added  that  the  advisability  of  beginning  the 
sex  teaching  of  children  with  the  facts  of  botany  was  repeatedly  empha- 
sized by  various  speakers  at  the  special  meeting  of  the  German  Congress 
for  Combating  Venereal  Disease  devoted  to  the  subject  of  sexual  instruc- 
tion   (Sexualpadagogik,  especially  pp.  36,  47,  76). 

The  transition  from  botany  to  the  elementary  zoology  of  the 
lower  animals,  to  human  anatomy  and  physiology,  and  to  the 
science  of  anthropology  based  on  these,  is  simple  and  natural. 
It  is  not  likely  to  be  taken  in  detail  until  the  age  of  puberty. 
Sex  enters  into  all  these  subjects  and  should  not  be  artificially 
excluded  from  them  in  the  education  of  either  boys  or  girls. 
The  text-books  from  which  the  sexual  system  is  entirely  omitted 
ought  no  longer  to  be  tolerated.     The  nature  and  secretion  of  the 


60  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

testicles,  the  meaning  of  the  ovaries  and  of  menstruation,  as 
well  as  the  significance  of  metabolism  and  the  urinary  excretion, 
should  be  clear  in  their  main  lines  to  all  boys  and  girls  who  have 
reached  the  age  of  puberty. 

At  puberty  there  arises  a  new  and  powerful  reason  why  boys 
and  girls  should  receive  definite  instruction  in  matters  of  sex. 
Before  that  age  it  is  possible  for  the  foolish  parent  to  imagine 
that  a  child  may  be  preserved  in  ignorant  innocence.1  At 
puberty  that  belief  is  obviously  no  longer  possible.  The 
efflorescence  of  puberty  with  the  development  of  the  sexual 
organs,  the  appearance  of  hair  in  unfamiliar  places,  the  general 
related  organic  changes,  the  spontaneous  and  perhaps  alarming 
occurrence  in  boys  of  seminal  emissions,  and  in  girls  of  menstrua- 
tion, the  unaccustomed  and  sometimes  acute  recognition  of 
sexual  desire  accompanied  by  new  sensations  in  the  sexual  organs 
and  leading  perhaps  to  masturbation;  all  these  arouse,  as  we 
cannot  fail  to  realize,  a  new  anxiety  in  the  boy's  or  girl's  mind, 
and  a  new  curiosity,  all  the  more  acute  in  many  cases  because  it 
is  carefully  concealed  as  too  private,  and  even  too  shameful,  to 
speak  of  to  anyone.  In  boys,  especially  if  of  sensitive  tempera- 
ment, the  suffering  thus  caused  may  be  keen  and  prolonged. 

A  doctor  of  philosophy,  prominent  in  his  profession,  wrote  to  Stan- 
ley Hall  (Adolescence,  vol.  i,  p.  452)  :  "My  entire  youth,  from  six  to 
eighteen,  was  made  miserable  from  lack  of  knowledge  that  any  one  who 
knew  anything  of  the  nature  of  puberty  might  have  given;  this  long 
sense  of  defect,  dread  of  operation,  shame  and  worry,  has  left  an  indeli- 
ble mark."  There  are  certainly  many  men  who  could  say  the  same. 
Lancaster  ("Psychology  and  Pedagogy  of  Adolescence,"  Pedagogical 
Seminary,  July,  1897,  pp.  123-5)  speaks  strongly  regarding  the  evils 
of  ignorance  of  sexual  hygiene,  and  the  terrible  fact  that  millions  of 
youths  are  always  in  the  hands  of  quacks  who  dupe  them  into  the  belief 
that  they  are  on  the  road  to  an  awful  destiny  merely  because  they  have 
occasional  emissions  during  sleep.  "This  is  not  a  light  matter,"  Lan- 
caster declares.  "It  strikes  at  the  very  foundation  of  our  inmost  life. 
It  deals  with  the  reproductory  part  of  our  natures,  and  must  have  a  deep 
hereditary  influence.  It  is  a  natural  result  of  the  foolish  false  modesty 
shown  regarding  all  sex  instruction.     Every  boy  should  be  taught  the 

1  Moll  (op.  cit.,  p.  224)  argues  well  how  impossible  it  is  to  pre- 
serve children  from  sights  and  influence  connected  with  the  sexual  life. 


SEXUAL    EDUCATION.  61 

simple  physiological  facts  before  his  life  is  forever  blighted  by  this 
cause."  Lancaster  has  had  in  his  hands  one  thousand  letters,  mostly 
written  by  young  people,  who  were  usually  normal,  and  addressed  to 
quacks  who  were  duping  them.  From  time  to  time  the  suicides  of 
youths  from  this  cause  are  reported,  and  in  many  mysterious  suicides 
this  has  undoubtedly  been  the  real  cause.  "Week  after  week,"  writes 
the  British  Medical  Journal  in  an  editorial  ("Dangerous  Quack  Litera- 
ture: The  Moral  of  a  Recent  Suicide,"  Oct.  1,  1892),  "we  receive 
despairing  letters  from  those  victims  of  foul  birds  of  prey  who  have 
obtained  theii  first  hold  on  those  they  rob,  torture  and  often  ruin,  by 
advertisements  inserted  by  newspapers  of  a  respectable,  nay,  even  of  a 
valuable  and  respected,  character."  It  is  added  that  the  wealthy  pro- 
prietors of  such  newspapers,  often  enjoying  a  reputation  for  benevolence, 
even  when  the  matter  is  brought  before  them,  refuse  to  interfere  as  they 
would  thereby  lose  a  source  of  income,  and  a  censorship  of  advertise- 
ments is  proposed.  This,  however,  is  difficult,  and  would  be  quite 
unnecessary  if  youths  received  proper  enlightenment  from  their  natural 
guardians. 

Masturbation,  and  the  fear  that  by  an  occasional  and  perhaps  out- 
grown practice  of  masturbation  they  have  sometimes  done  themselves 
irreparable  injury,  is  a  common  source  of  anxiety  to  boys.  It  has  long 
been  a  question  whether  a  boy  should  be  warned  against  masturbation. 
At  a  meeting  of  the  Section  of  Psychology  of  the  British  Medical  Asso- 
ciation some  years  ago,  four  speakers,  including  the  President  (Dr. 
Blandford),  were  decidedly  in  favor  of  parents  warning  their  children 
against  masturbation,  while  three  speakers  were  decidedly  against  that 
course,  mainly  on  the  ground  that  it  was  possible  to  pass  through  even 
a  public  school  life  wdthout  hearing  of  masturbation,  and  also  that  the 
warning  against  masturbation  might  encourage  the  practice.  It  is, 
however,  becoming  more  and  more  clearly  realized  that  ignorance,  even 
if  it  can  be  maintained,  is  a  perilous  possession,  while  the  teaching  that 
consists,  as  it  should,  in  a  loving  mother's  counsel  to  the  child  from  his 
earliest  years  to  treat  his  sexual  parts  with  care  and  respect,  can  only 
lead  to  masturbation  in  the  child  who  is  already  irresistibly  impelled  to 
it.  Most  of  the  sex  manuals  for  boys  touch  on  masturbation,  sometimes 
exaggerating  its  dangers;  such  exaggeration  should  be  avoided,  for  it 
leads  to  far  worse  evils  than  those  it  attempts  to  prevent.  It  seems 
undesirable  that  any  warnings  about  masturbation  should  form  part  of 
school  instruction,  unless  under  very  special  circumstances.  The  sexual 
instruction  imparted  in  the  school  on  sexual  as  on  other  subjects  should 
be  absolutely  impersonal  and  objective. 

At  this  point  we  approach  one  of  the  difficulties  in  the  way  of 
sexual  enlightenment:  the  ignorance  or  unwisdom  of  the  would-be 
teachers.    This  difficulty  at  present  exists  both  in  the  home  and  the 


62  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

school,  while  it  destroys  the  value  of  many  manuals  written  for  the 
sexual  instruction  of  the  young.  The  mother,  who  ought  to  be  the 
child's  confidant  and  guide  in  matters  of  sexual  education,  and  could 
naturally  be  so  if  left  to  her  own  healthy  instincts,  has  usually  been 
brought  up  in  false  traditions  which  it  requires  a  high  degree  of  intelli- 
gence and  character  to  escape  from;  the  school-teacher,  even  if  only 
called  upon  to  give  instruction  in  natural  history,  is  oppressed  by  the 
same  traditions,  and  by  false  shame  concerning  the  whole  subject  of  sex; 
the  writer  of  manuals  on  sex  has  often  only  freed  himself  from  these 
bonds  in  order  to  advocate  dogmatic,  unscientific,  and  sometimes  mis- 
chievous opinions  which  have  been  evolved  in  entire  ignorance  of  the 
real  facts.  As  Moll  says  (Das  Seanialleben  des  Kindes,  p.  276),  neces- 
sary as  sexual  enlightenment  is,  we  cannot  help  feeling  a  little  skeptical 
as  to  its  results  so  long  as  those  who  ought  to  enlighten  are  themselves 
often  in  need  of  enlightenment.  He  refers  also  to  the  fact  that  even 
among  competent  authorities  there  is  difference  of  opinion  concerning 
important  matters,  as,  for  instance,  whether  masturbation  is  physiolog- 
ical at  the  first  development  of  the  sexual  impulse  and  how  far  sexual 
abstinence  is  beneficial.  But  it  is  evident  that  the  difficulties  due  to 
false  tradition  and  ignorance  will  diminish  as  sound  traditions  and  bet- 
ter knowledge  become  more  widely  diffused. 

The  girl  at  puberty  is  usually  less  keenly  and  definitely 
conscious  of  her  sexual  nature  than  the  boy.  But  the  risks  she 
runs  from  sexual  ignorance,  though  for  the  most  part  different, 
are  more  subtle  and  less  easy  to  repair.  She  is  often  extremely 
inquisitive  concerning  these  matters;  the  thoughts  of  adolescent 
girls,  and  often  their  conversation  among  themselves,  revolve 
much  around  sexual  and  allied  mysteries.  Even  in  the  matter  of 
conscious  sexual  impulse  the  girl  is  often  not  so  widely  different 
from  her  brother,  nor  so  much  less  likely  to  escape  the  con- 
tamination of  evil  communications,  so  that  the  scruples  of 
foolish  and  ignorant  persons  who  dread  to  "sully  her  purity"  by 
proper  instruction  are  exceedingly  misplaced. 

Conversations  dealing  with  the  important  mysteries  of  human 
nature,  Obici  and  Marchesini  were  told  by  ladies  who  had  formerly  been 
pupils  in  Italian  Normal  Schools,  are  the  order  of  the  day  in  schools 
and  colleges,  and  specially  circle  around  procreation,  the  most  difficult 
mystery  of  all.  In  England,  even  in  the  best  and  most  modern  colleges, 
in  which  games  and  physical  exercise  are  much  cultivated,  I  am  told 
that  "the  majority  of  the  girls  are  entirely  ignorant  of  all  sexual  mat- 
ters, and  understand  nothing  whatever  about  them.    But  they  do  won- 


SEXUAL     EDUCATION.  63 

der  about  them,  and  talk  about  them  constantly"  (see  Appendix  D,  "The 
School-Friendships  of  Girls,"  in  the  second  volume  of  these  Studies). 
"The  restricted  life  and  fettered  mind  of  girls,"  wrote  a  well-known 
physician  some  years  ago  (J.  Milner  Fothergill,  Adolescence,  1880,  pp. 
20,  22)  "leave  them  with  less  to  actively  occupy  their  thoughts  than  is 
the  case  with  boys.  They  are  studiously  taught  concealment,  and  a  girl 
may  be  a  perfect  model  of  outward  decorum  and  yet  have  a  very  filthy 
mind.  The  prudishness  with  which  she  is  brought  up  leaves  her  no 
alternative  but  to  view  her  passions  from  the  nasty  side  of  human 
nature.  All  healthy  thought  on  the  subject  is  vigorously  repressed. 
Everything  is  done  to  darken  her  mind  and  foul  her  imagination  by 
throwing  her  back  on  her  own  thoughts  and  a  literature  with  which  she 
is  ashamed  to  own  acquaintance.  It  is  opposed  to  a  girl's  best  interests 
to  prevent  her  from  having  fair  and  just  conceptions  about  herself  and 
her  nature.  Many  a  fair  young  girl  is  irredeemably  ruined  on  the  very 
threshold  of  life,  herself  and  her  family  disgraced,  from  ignorance  as 
much  as  from  vice.  When  the  moment  of  temptation  comes  she  falls 
withoiit  any  palpable  resistance;  she  has  no  trained  educated  power  of 
resistance  within  herself;  her  whole  future  hangs,  not  upon  herself,  but 
upon  the  perfection  of  the  social  safeguards  by  which  she  is  hedged  and 
surrounded."  Under  the  free  social  order  of  America  to-day  much  the 
same  results  are  found.  In  an  instructive  article  ("Why  Girls  Go 
Wrong,"  Ladies'  Home  Journal,  Jan.,  1907)  B.  B.  Lindsey,  who,  as 
Judge  of  the  Juvenile  Court  of  Denver,  is  able  to  speak  with  authority, 
brings  forward  ample  evidence  on  this  head.  Both  girls  and  boys,  he 
has  found,  sometimes  possess  manuscript  books  in  which  they  had  writ- 
ten down  the  crudest  sexual  things.  These  children  were  often  sweet- 
faced,  pleasant,  refined  and  intelligent,  and  they  had  respectable  par- 
ents; but  no  one  had  ever  spoken  to  them  of  sex  matters,  except  the 
worst  of  their  school-fellows  or  some  coarse-minded  and  reckless  adult. 
By  careful  inquiry  Lindsey  found  that  only  in  one  in  twenty  cases  had 
the  parents  ever  spoken  to  the  children  of  sexual  subjects.  In  nearly 
eveiy  case  the  children  acknowledged  that  it  was  not  from  their  parents, 
but  in  the  street  or  from  older  companions,  that  they  learnt  the  facts  of 
sex.  The  parents  usually  imagined  that  their  children  were  absolutely 
ignorant  of  these  matters,  and  were  astonished  to  realize  their  mistake; 
"parents  do  not  know  their  children,  nor  have  they  the  least  idea  of 
what  their  children  know,  or  what  their  children  talk  about  and  do 
when  away  from  them."  The  parents  guilty  of  this  neglect  to  instruct 
their  children,  are,  Lindsey  declares,  traitors  to  their  children.  From 
his  own  experience  he  judges  that  nine-tenths  of  the  girls  who  "go 
wrong,"  whether  or  not  they  sink  in  the  world,  do  so  owing  to  the  inat- 
tention of  their  parents,  and  that  in  the  case  of  most  prostitutes  the 
mischief  is  really  done  before  the  age  of  twelve;    "every  wayward  girl 


64  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

I  have  talked  to  has  assured  me  of  this  truth."  He  considers  that  nine- 
tenths  of  school-boys  and  school-girls,  in  town  or  country,  are  very 
inquisitive  regarding  matters  of  sex,  and,  to  his  own  amazement,  he 
has  found  that  in  the  girls  this  is  as  marked  as  in  the  boys. 

It  is  the  business  of  the  girl's  mother,  at  least  as  much  as  of 
the  boy's,  to  watch  over  her  child  from  the  earliest  years  and  to 
win  her  confidence  in  all  the  intimate  and  personal  matters  of 
sex.  With  these  aspects  the  school  cannot  properly  meddle. 
But  in  matters  of  physical  sexual  hygiene,  notably  menstruation, 
in  regard  to  which  all  girls  stand  on  the  same  level,  it  is  certainly 
the  duty  of  the  teacher  to  take  an  actively  watchful  part,  and, 
moreover,  to  direct  the  general  work  of  education  accordingly, 
and  to  ensure  that  the  pupil  shall  rest  whenever  that  may  seem 
to  be  desirable.  This  is  part  of  the  very  elements  of  the  educa- 
tion of  girls.  To  disregard  it  should  disqualify  a  teacher  from 
taking  further  share  in  educational  work.  Yet  it  is  constantly 
and  persistently  neglected.  A  large  number  of  girls  have  not 
even  been  prepared  by  their  mothers  or  teachers  for  the  first 
onset  of  the  menstrual  flow,  sometimes  with  disastrous  results 
both  to  their  bodily  and  mental  health.1 

"I  know  of  no  large  girl's  school,"  wrote  a  distinguished  gynae- 
cologist, Sir  W.  S.  Playfair  ("Education  and  Training  of  Girls  at 
Puberty,"  British  Medical  Journal,  Dec.  7,  1895),  "in  which  the  abso- 
lute distinction  which  exists  between  boys  and  girls  as  regards  the 
dominant  menstrual  function  is  systematically  cared  for  and  attended 
to.  Indeed,  the  feeling  of  all  schoolmistresses  is  distinctly  antagonistic 
to  such  an  admission.  The  contention  is  that  there  is  no  real  difference 
between  an  adolescent  male  and  female,  that  what  is  good  for  one  is 
good  for  the  other,  and  that  such  as  there  is  is  due  to  the  evil  customs 
of  the  past  which  have  denied  to  women  the  ambitions  and  advantages 
open  to  men,  and  that  this  will  disappear  when  a  happier  era  is  inaug- 
urated. If  this  be  so,  how  comes  it  that  while  every  practical  physician 
of  experience  has  seen  many  cases  of  ansemia  and  chlorosis  in  girls, 
accompanied  by  amenorrhcea  or  menorrhagia,  headaches,  palpitations, 
emaciation,  and  all  the  familiar  accompaniments  of  breakdown,  an 
analogous  condition  in  a  school-boy  is  so  rare  that  it  may  well  be 
doubted  if  it  is  ever  seen  at  all?" 


i  Girls  are  not  even  prepared,  in  many  cases,  for  the  appearance 
of  the  pubic  hair.  This  unexpected  growth  of  hair  frequently  causes 
young  girls  much  secret  worry,  and  often  they  carefully  cut  it  off. 


SEXUAL     EDUCATION.  65 

It  is,  however,  only  the  excuses  for  this  almost  criminal  negligence, 
as  it  ought  to  be  considered,  which  are  new;  the  negligence  itself  is 
ancient.  Half  a  century  earlier,  before  the  new  era  of  feminine  educa- 
tion, another  distinguished  gynaecologist,  Tilt  (Elements  of  Health  and 
Principles  of  Female  Hygiene,  1S52,  p.  18)  stated  that  from  a  statistical 
inquiry  regarding  the  onset  of  menstruation  in  nearly  one  thousand 
women  he  found  that  "25  per  cent,  were  totally  unprepared  for  its 
appearance;  that  thirteen  out  of  the  twenty-five  were  much  frightened, 
screamed,  or  went  into  hysterical  fits;  and  that  six  out  of  the  thirteen 
thought  themselves  wounded  and  washed  with  cold  water.  Of  those 
frightened      .      .  the  general  health  was  seriously  impaired." 

Engelmann,  after  stating  that  his  experience  in  America  was 
similar  to  Tilt's  in  England,  continues  ("The  Health  of  the  American 
Girl,"  Transactions  of  the  Southern  Surgical  and  Gynaecological  Society, 
1890)  :  "To  innumerable  women  has  fright,  nervous  and  emotional 
excitement,  exposure  to  cold,  brought  injury  at  puberty.  What  more 
natural  than  that  the  anxious  girl,  surprised  by  the  sudden  and  unex- 
pected loss  of  the  precious  life-fluid,  should  seek  to  cheek  the  bleeding 
wound — as  she  supposes  ?  For  this  purpose  the  use  of  cold  washes  and 
applications  is  common,  some  even  seek  to  stop  the  flow  by  a  cold  bath, 
as  was  done  by  a  now  careful  mother,  who  long  lay  at  the  point  of  death 
from  the  result  of  such  indiscretion,  and  but  slowly,  by  years  of  care, 
regained  her  health.  The  terrible  warning  has  not  been  lost,  and  mind- 
ful of  her  own  experience  she  has  taught  her  children  a  lesson  which 
but  few  are  fortunate  enough  to  learn — the  individual  care  during 
periods  of  functional  activity  which  is  needful  for  the  preservation  of 
woman's  health." 

In  a  study  of  one  hundred  and  twenty-five  American  high  school 
girls  Dr.  Helen  Kennedy  refers  to  the  "modesty"  which  makes  it  impos- 
sible even  for  mothers  and  daughters  to  speak  to  each  other  concerning 
the  menstrual  functions.  "Thirty-six  girls  in  this  high  school  passed 
into  womanhood  with  no  knowledge  whatever,  from  a  proper  source,  of 
all  that  makes  them  women.  Thirty-nine  were  probably  not  much 
wiser,  for  they  stated  that  they  had  received  some  instruction,  but  had 
not  talked  freely  on  the  matter.  From  the  fact  that  the  curious  girl 
did  not  talk  freely  on  what  naturally  interested  her,  it  is  possible  she 
was  put  off  with  a  few  words  as  to  personal  care,  and  a  reprimand  for 
her  curiosity.  Less  than  half  of  the  girls  felt  free  to  talk  with  their 
mothers  of  this  most  important  matter!"  (Helen  Kennedy,  "Effects  of 
High  School  Work  upon  Girls  During  Adolescence,"  Pedagogical  Semi- 
nary, June,  1896.) 

The  same  state  of  things  probably  also  prevails  in  other  countries. 
Thus,  as  regards  France,  Edmond  de  Goncourt  in  Chine  (pp.  137-139) 
described  the  terror  of  his  young  heroine  at  the  appearance  of  the  first 

5 


66  PSYCHOLOGY    OP    SEX. 

menstrual  period  for  which  she  had  never  been  prepared.  He  adds: 
"It  is  very  seldom,  indeed,  that  women  speak  of  this  eventuality. 
Mothers  fear  to  warn  their  daughters,  elder  sisters  dislike  confidences 
with  their  younger  sisters,  governesses  are  generally  mute  with  girls 
who  have  no  mothers  or  sisters." 

Sometimes  this  leads  to  suicide  or  to  attempts  at  suicide.  Thus  a 
few  years  ago  the  case  was  reported  in  the  French  newspapers  of  a  young 
girl  of  fifteen,  who  threw  herself  into  the  Seine  at  Saint-Ouen.  She  was 
rescued,  and  on  being  brought  before  the  police  commissioner  said  that 
she  had  been  attacked  by  an  "unknown  disease"  which  had  driven  her 
to  despair.  Discreet  inquiry  revealed  that  the  mysterious  malady  was 
one  common  to  all  women,  and  the  girl  was  restored  to  her  insufficiently 
punished  parents. 

Half  a  century  ago  the  sexual  life  of  girls  was  ignored  by 
their  parents  and  teachers  from  reasons  of  prudishness;  at  the 
present  time,  when  quite  different  ideas  prevail  regarding 
feminine  education,  it  is  ignored  on  the  ground  that  girls  should 
be  as  independent  of  their  physiological  sexual  life  as  boys  are. 
The  fact  that  this  mischievous  neglect  has  prevailed  equally 
under  such  different  conditions  indicates  clearly  that  the  vary- 
ing reasons  assigned  for  it  are  merely  the  cloaks  of  ignorance. 
With  the  growth  of  knowledge  we  may  reasonably  hope  that  one 
of  the  chief  evils  which  at  present  undermine  in  early  life  not 
only  healthy  motherhood  but  healthy  womanhood  generally,  may 
be  gradually  eliminated.  The  data  now  being  accumulated  show 
not  only  the  extreme  prevalence  of  painful,  disordered,  and 
absent  menstruation  in  adolescent  girls  and  young  women,  but 
also  the  great  and  sometimes  permanent  evils  inflicted  upon  even 
healthy  girls  when  at  the  beginning  of  sexual  life  they  are  sub- 
jected to  severe  strain  of  any  kind.  Medical  authorities, 
whichever  sex  they  belong  to,  may  now  be  said  to  be  almost  or 
quite  unanimous  on  this  point.  Some  years  ago,  indeed,  Dr. 
Mary  Putnam  Jacobi,  in  a  very  able  book,  The  Question  of  Rest 
for  Women,  concluded  that  "ordinarily  healthy"  women  may 
disregard  the  menstrual  period,  but  she  admitted  that  forty-six 
per  cent,  of  women  are  not  "ordinarily  healthy,"  and  a  minority 
which  comes  so  near  to  being  a  majority  can  by  no  means  be 
dismissed  as  a  negligible  quantity.     Girls  themselves,  indeed, 


SEXUAL     EDUCATION.  67 

carried  away  by  the  ardor  of  their  pursuit  of  work  or  amuse- 
ment, are  usually  recklessly  and  ignorantly  indifferent  to  the 
serious  risks  they  run.  But  the  opinions  of  teachers  are  now 
tending  to  agree  with  medical  opinion  in  recognizing  the 
importance  of  care  and  rest  during  the  years  of  adolescence,  and 
teachers  are  even  prepared  to  admit  that  a  year's  rest  from  hard 
work  during  the  period  that  a  girl's  sexual  life  is  becoming 
established,  while  it  may  ensure  her  health  and  vigor,  is  not  even 
a  disadvantage  from  the  educational  point  of  view.  With  the 
growth  of  knowledge  and  the  decay  of  ancient  prejudices,  we 
may  reasonably  hope  that  women  will  be  emancipated  from  the 
traditions  of  a  false  civilization,  which  have  forced  her  to  regard 
her  glory  as  her  shame, — though  it  has  never  been  so  among 
robust  primitive  peoples, — and  it  is  encouraging  to  find  that  so 
distinguished  an  educator  as  Principal  Stanley  Hall  looks  for- 
ward with  confidence  to  such  a  time.  In  his  exhaustive  work  on 
Adolescence  he  writes:  "Instead  of  shame  of  this  function  girls 
should  be  taught  the  greatest  reverence  for  it,  and  should  help  it 
to  normality  by  regularly  stepping  aside  at  stated  times  for  a 
few  years  till  it  is  well  established  and  normal.  To  higher  beings 
that  looked  down  upon  human  life  as  we  do  upon  flowers,  these 
would  be  the  most  interesting  and  beautiful  hours  of  blossoming. 
With  more  self-knowledge  women  will  have  more  self-respect  at 
this  time.  Savagery  reveres  this  state  and  it  gives  to  women  a 
mystic  awe.  The  time  may  come  when  we  must  even  change  the 
divisions  of  the  year  for  women,  leaving  to  man  his  week  and 
giving  to  her  the  same  number  of  Sabbaths  per  year,  but  in 
groups  of  four  successive  days  per  month.  When  woman  asserts 
her  true  physiological  rights  she  will  begin  here,  and  will  glory 
in  what,  in  an  age  of  ignorance,  man  made  her  think  to  be  her 
shame.  The  pathos  about  the  leaders  of  woman's  so-called 
emancipation,  is  that  they,  even  more  than  those  they  would 
persuade,  accept  man's  estimate  of  this  state."1 

1  G.  S.  Hall,  Adolescence,  vol.  i,  p.  511.  Many  years  ago,  in  1875, 
the  late  Dr.  Clarke,  in  his  Sex  in  Education,  advised  menstrual  rest  for 
girls,  and  thereby  aroused  a  violent  opposition  which  would  certainly 
not  he  found  nowadays,  when  the  special  risks  of  womanhood  are  becom- 
ing more  clearly  understood. 


68  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

These  wise  words  cannot  be  too  deeply  pondered.  The 
pathos  of  the  situation  has  indeed  been — at  all  events  in  the 
past  for  to-day  a  more  enlightened  generation  is  growing  up — 
that  the  very  leaders  of  the  woman's  movement  have  often 
betrayed  the  cause  of  women.  They  have  adopted  the  ideals  of 
men,  they  have  urged  women  to  become  second-rate  men,  they 
have  declared  that  the  healthy  natural  woman  disregards  the 
presence  of  her  menstrual  functions.  This  is  the  very  reverse 
of  the  truth.  "They  claim/'  remarks  Engelmann,  "that  woman 
in  her  natural  state  is  the  physical  equal  of  man,  and  constantly 
point  to  the  primitive  woman,  the  female  of  savage  peoples,  as 
an  example  of  this  supposed  axiom.  Do  they  know  how  well  this 
same  savage  is  aware  of  the  weakness  of  woman  and  her  sus- 
ceptibility at  certain  periods  of  her  life?  And  with  what  care  he 
protects  her  from  harm  at  these  periods?  I  believe  not.  The 
importance  of  surrounding  women  with  certain  precautions 
during  the  height  of  these  great  functional  waves  of  her 
existence  was  appreciated  by  all  peoples  living  in  an  approx- 
imately natural  state,  by  all  races  at  all  times ;  and  among  their 
comparatively  few  religious  customs  this  one,  affording  rest  to 
women,  was  most  persistently  adhered  to."  It  is  among  the 
white  races  alone  that  the  sexual  invalidism  of  women  prevails, 
and  it  is  the  white  races  alone,  which,  outgrowing  the  religious 
ideas  with  which  the  menstrual  seclusion  of  women  was  asso- 
ciated, have  flung  away  that  beneficent  seclusion  itself,  throwing 
away  the  baby  with  the  bath  in  an  almost  literal  sense.1 

In  Germany  Tobler  has  investigated  the  menstrual  histories  of 
over  one  thousand  women  (Monatsschrift  fur  Oeburtshiilfe  und  Chjna- 
Icologie,  July,  1905).     He  finds  that  in  the  great  majority  of  women  at 


i  For  a  summary  of  the  physical  and  mental  phenomena  of  the 
menstrual  period,  see  Havelock  Ellis:  Man  and  Woman,  Ch.  XI.  The 
primitive  conception  of  menstruation  is  briefly  discussed  in  Appendix 
A  to  the  first  volume  of  these  Studies,  and  more  elaborately  by  J.  G. 
Frazer  in  The  Golden  Bough.  A  large  collection  of  facts  with  regard 
to  the  menstrual  seclusion  of  women  throughout  the  world  will  be  found 
in  Ploss  and  Bartels,  Das  Weib.  The  pubertal  seclusion  of  girls  at 
Torres  Straits  has  been  especially  studied  by  Seligmann,  Reports  Anthro- 
pological Expedition  to  Torres  Straits,  vol.  v,  Ch.  VI. 


SEXUAL    EDUCATION.  69 

the  present  day  menstruation  is  associated  with  distinct  deterioration  of 
the  general  health,  and  diminution  of  functional  energy.  In  26  per  cent, 
local  pain,  general  malaise,  and  mental  and  nervous  anomalies  coexisted; 
in  larger  proportion  come  the  cases  in  which  local  pain,  general  weak 
health  or  psychic  abnormality  was  experienced  alone  at  this  period.  In 
16  per  cent,  only  none  of  these  symptoms  were  experienced.  In  a  very 
small  separate  group  the  physical  and  mental  functions  were  stronger 
during  this  period,  but  in  half  of  these  cases  there  was  distinct  disturb- 
ance during  the  intermenstrual  period.  Tobler  concludes  that,  while 
menstruation  itself  is  physiological,  all  these  disturbances  are  patho- 
logical. 

As  far  as  England  is  concerned,  at  a  discussion  of  normal  and 
painful  menstruation  at  a  meeting  of  the  British  Association  of  Regis- 
tered Medical  Women  on  the  7th  of  July,  1908,  it  was  stated  by  Miss 
Bentham  that  50  per  cent,  of  girls  in  good  position  suffered  from  pain- 
ful menstruation.  Mrs.  Dunnett  said  it  usually  occurred  between  the 
ages  of  twenty-four  and  thirty,  being  frequently  due  to  neglect  to  rest 
during  menstruation  in  the  earlier  years,  and  Mrs.  Grainger  Evans  had 
found  that  this  condition  was  very  common  among  elementary  school 
teachers  who  had  worked  hard  for  examinations  during  early  girlhood. 

In  America  various  investigations  have  been  carried  out,  showing 
the  prevalence  of  disturbance  in  the  sexual  health  of  school  girls  and 
young  women.  Thus  Dr.  Helen  P.  Kennedy  obtained  elaborate  data  con- 
cerning the  menstrual  life  of  one  hundred  and  twenty-five  high  school 
girls  of  the  average  age  of  eighteen  ("Effect  of  High  School  Work  upon 
Girls  During  Adolescence,"  Pedagogical  Seminary,,  June,  1896).  Only 
twenty-eight  felt  no  pain  during  the  period;  half  the  total  number 
experienced  disagreeable  symptoms  before  the  period  (such  as  headache, 
malaise,  irritability  of  temper),  while  forty- four  complained  of  other 
symptoms  besides  pain  during  the  period  (especially  headache  and  great 
weakness).  Jane  Kelley  Sabine  (quoted  in  Boston  Medical  and  Surgical 
Journal,  Sept.  15,  1904)  found  in  New  England  schools  among  two  thou- 
sand girls  that  75  per  cent,  had  menstrual  troubles,  90  per  cent,  had 
leucorrhcea  and  ovarian  neuralgia,  and  60  per  cent,  had  to  give  up  work 
for  two  days  during  each  month.  These  results  seem  more  than  usually 
unfavorable,  but  are  significant,  as  they  cover  a  large  number  of  cases. 
The  conditions  in  the  Pacific  States  are  not  much  better.  Dr.  Mary 
Eitter  (in  a  paper  read  before  the  California  State  Medical  Society  in 
1903)  stated  that  of  660  Freshmen  girls  at  the  University  of  California, 
67  per  cent,  were  subject  to  menstrual  disorders,  27  per  cent,  to  head- 
aches, 30  per  cent,  to  backaches,  29  per  cent,  were  habitually  constipated, 
16  per  cent,  had  abnormal  heart  sounds;  only  23  per  cent,  were  free 
from  functional  disturbances.  Dr.  Helen  MaeMurchey,  in  an  interesting- 
paper  on  "Physiological  Phenomena  Preceding  or  Accompanying  Men- 


70  PSYCHOLOGY    OP    SEX. 

struation"  (Lancet,  Oct.  5,  1901),  by  inquiries  among  one  hundred 
medical  women,  nurses,  and  women  teachers  in  Toronto  concerning  the 
presence  or  absence  of  twenty-one  different  abnormal  menstrual  phe- 
nomena, found  that  between  50  and  60  per  cent,  admitted  that  they 
were  liable  at  this  time  to  disturbed  sleep,  to  headache,  to  mental 
depression,  to  digestive  disturbance,  or  to  disturbance  of  the  special 
senses,  while  about  25  to  50  per  cent,  were  liable  to  neuralgia,  to  vertigo, 
to  excessive  nervous  energy,  to  defective  nervous  and  muscular  power, 
to  cutaneous  hyperasthenia,  to  vasomotor  disturbances,  to  constipation, 
to  diarrhoea,  to  increased  urination,  to  cutaneous  eruption,  to  increased 
liability  to  take  cold,  or  to  irritating  watery  discharges  before  or  after 
the  menstrual  discharge.  This  inquiry  is  of  much  interest,  because  it 
clearly  brings  out  the  marked  prevalence  at  menstruation  of  conditions 
which,  though  not  necessarily  of  any  gravity,  yet  definitely  indicate 
decreased  power  of  resistance  to  morbid  influences  and  diminished 
efficiency  for  work. 

How  serious  an  impediment  menstrual  troubles  are  to  a  woman  is 
indicated  by  the  fact  that  the  women  who  achieve  success  and  fame 
seem  seldom  to  be  greatly  affected  by  them.  To  that  we  may,  in  part, 
attribute  the  frequency  with  which  leaders  of  the  women's  movement 
have  treated  menstruation  as  a  thing  of  no  importance  in  a  woman's 
life.  Adele  Gerhard,  and  Helene  Simon,  also,  in  their  valuable  and 
impartial  work,  Mutterschaft  und  Geistige  Arbeit  (p.  312),  failed  to 
find,  in  their  inquiries  among  women  of  distinguished  ability,  that  men- 
struation was  regarded  as  seriously  disturbing  to  work. 

Of  late  the  suggestion  that  adolescent  girls  shall  not  only  rest  from 
work  during  two  days  of  the  menstrual  period,  but  have  an  entire  holi- 
day from  school  during  the  first  year  of  sexual  life,  has  frequently  been 
put  forward,  both  from  the  medical  and  the  educational  side.  At  the 
meeting  of  the  Association  of  Registered  Medical  Women,  already 
referred  to,  Miss  Sturge  spoke  of  the  good  results  obtained  in  a  school 
where,  during  the  first  two  years  after  puberty,  the  girls  were  kept  in 
bed  for  the  first  two  days  of  each  menstrual  period.  Some  years  ago 
Dr.  G.  W.  Cook  ("Some  Disorders  of  Menstruation,"  American  Journal 
of  Obstetrics,  April,  1896),  after  giving  cases  in  point,  wrote:  "It  is 
my  deliberate  conviction  that  no  girl  shoiild  be  confined  at  study  during 
the  year  of  her  puberty,  but  she  should  live  an  outdoor  life."  In  an 
article  on  "Alumna's  Children,"  by  "An  Alumna"  (Popular  Science 
Monthly,  May,  1904),  dealing  with  the  sexual  invalidism  of  American 
women  and  the  severe  strain  of  motherhood  upon  them,  the  author, 
though  she  is  by  no  means  hostile  to  education,  which  is  not,  she 
declares,  at  fault,  pleads  for  rest  for  the  pubertal  girl.  "If  the  brain 
claims  her  whole  vitality,  how  can  there  be  any  proper  development? 
Just  as  very  young  children  should  give  all  their  strength  for  some  years 


SEXUAL     EDUCATION.  71 

solely  to  physical  growth  before  the  brain  is  allowed  to  make  any  con- 
siderable demands,  so  at  this  critical  period  in  the  life  of  the  woman 
nothing  should  obstruct  the  right  of  way  of  this  important  system.  A 
year  at  the  least  should  be  made  especially  easy  for  her,  with  neither 
mental  nor  nervous  strain ;  and  throughout  the  rest  of  her  school  days 
she  should  have  her  periodical  day  of  rest,  free  from  any  study  or  over- 
exertion." In  another  article  on  the  same  subject  in  the  same  journal 
("The  Health  of  American  Girls,"  Sept.,  1907),  Nellie  Comins  Whitaker 
advocates  a  similar  course.  "I  am  coming  to  be  convinced,  somewhat 
against  my  wish,  that  there  are  many  cases  when  the  girl  ought  to  bs 
taken  out  of  school  entirely  for  some  months  or  for  a  year  at  the  period 
of  puberty.'''  She  adds  that  the  chief  obstacle  in  the  way  is  the  girl's 
own  likes  and  dislikes,  and  the  ignorance  of  her  mother  who  has  been 
accustomed  to  think  that  pain  is  a  woman's  natural  lot. 

Such  a  period  of  rest  from  mental  strain,  while  it  would  fortify 
the  organism  in  its  resistance  to  any  reasonable  strain  later,  need  by  no 
means  be  lost  for  education  in  the  wider  sense  of  the  word,  for  the  edu- 
cation required  in  classrooms  is  but  a  small  part  of  the  education 
required  for  life.  Nor  should  it  by  any  means  be  reserved  merely  for 
the  sickly  and  delicate  girl.  The  tragic  part  of  the  present  neglect  to 
give  girls  a  really  sound  and  fitting  education  is  that  the  best  and  finest 
girls  are  thereby  so  often  ruined.  Even  the  English  policeman,  who 
admittedly  belongs  in  physical  vigor  and  nervous  balance  to  the  flower 
of  the  population,  is  unable  to  bear  the  strain  of  his  life,  and  is  said 
to  be  worn  out  in  twenty-five  years.  It  is  equally  foolish  to  submit  the 
finest  flowers  of  girlhood  to  a  strain  which  is  admittedly  too  severe. 

It  seems  to  be  clear  that  the  main  factor  in  the  common 
sexual  and  general  invalidism  of  girls  and  young  women  is  bad 
hygiene,  in  the  first  place  consisting  in  neglect  of  the  menstrual 
functions  and  in  the  second  place  in  faulty  habits  generally. 
In  all  the  more  essential  matters  that  concern  the  hygiene  of 
the  body  the  traditions  of  girls — and  this  seems  to  be  more 
especially  the  case  in  the  Anglo-Saxon  countries — are  inferior 
to  those  of  youths.  Women  are  much  more  inclined  than  men 
to  subordinate  these  things  to  what  seems  to  them  some  more 
urgent  interest  or  fancy  of  the  moment ;  they  are  trained  to  wear 
awkward  and  constricting  garments,  they  are  indifferent  to 
regular  and  substantial  meals,  preferring  innutritious  and 
indigestible  foods  and  drinks;  they  are  apt  to  disregard  the 
demands   of   the   bowels   and   the   bladder   out   of   laziness   or 


72  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SE5. 

modesty;  they  are  even  indifferent  to  physical  cleanliness.1  In 
a  great  number  of  minor  ways,  which  separately  may  seem  to  be 
of  little  importance,  they  play  into  the  hands  of  an  environment 
which,  not  always  having  been  adequately  adjusted  to  their 
special  needs,  would  exert  a  considerable  stress  and  strain  even  if 
they  carefully  sought  to  guard  themselves  against  it.  It  has 
been  found  in  an  American  Women's  College  in  which  about  half 
the  scholars  wore  corsets  and  half  not,  that  nearly  all  the  honors 
and  prizes  went  to  the  non-corset-wearers.  McBride,  in  bringing 
forward  this  fact,  pertinently  remarks,  "If  the  wearing  of  a 
single  style  of  dress  will  make  this  difference  in  the  lives  of 
young  women,  and  that,  too,  in  their  most  vigorous  and  resistive 
period,  how  much  difference  will  a  score  of  unhealthy  habits 
make,  if  persisted  in  for  a  life-time  ?2 

"It  seems  evident,"  A.  E.  Giles  concludes  ("Some  Points  of  Pre- 
ventive Treatment  in  the  Diseases  of  Women,"  The  Hospital,  April  10, 
1897)  "that  dysmenorrhea  might  be  to  a  large  extent  prevented  by 
attention  to  general  health  and  education.     Short  hours  of  work,  espe- 


1  Thus  Miss  Lura  Sanborn,  Director  of  Physical  Training  at  the 
Chicago  Normal  School,  found  that  a  bath  once  a  fortnight  was  not 
unusual.  At  the  menstrual  period  especially  there  is  still  a  supersti- 
tious dread  of  water.  Girls  should  always  be  taught  that  at  this  period, 
above  all,  cleanliness  is  imperatively  necessary.  There  should  be  a  tepid 
hip  bath  night  and  morning,  and  a  vaginal  douche  (which  should  never 
be  cold)  is  always  advantageous,  both  for  comfort  as  well  as  clean- 
liness. There  is  not  the  slightest  reason  to  dread  water  during  men- 
struation. This  point  was  discussed  a  few  years  ago  in  the  British 
Medical  Journal  with  complete  unanimity  of  opinion.  A  distinguished 
American  obstetrician,  also,  Dr.  J.  Clifton  Edgar,  after  a  careful  study 
of  opinion  and  practice  in  this  matter  ("Bathing  During  the  Menstrual 
Period,"  American  Journal  Obstetrics,  Sept.,  1900),  concludes  that  it  is 
possible  and  beneficial  to  take  cold  baths  (though  not  sea-baths)  during 
the  period,  provided  due  precautions  are  observed,  and  that  there  are  no 
sudden  changes  of  habits.  Such  a  course  should  not  be  indiscriminately 
adopted,  but  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  in  sturdy  peasant  women  who 
are  inured  to  it  early  in  life  even  prolonged  immersion  in  the  sea  in 
fishing  has  no  evil  results,  and  is  even  beneficial.  Houzel  (Annales  de 
Gynecologic,  Dec,  1894)  has  published  statistics  of  the  menstrual  life 
of  123  fisherwomen  on  the  French  coast.  They  were  accustomed  to 
shrimp  for  hours  at  a  time  in  the  sea,  often  to  above  the  waist,  and 
then  walk  about  in  their  wet  clothes  selling  the  shrimps.  They  all 
insisted  that  their  menstruation  was  easier  when  they  were  actively  at 
work.     Their  periods  are  notably  regular,  and  their  fertility  is  high. 

2  J.  H.  McBride,  "The  Life  and  Health  of  Our  Girls  in  Relation  to 
Their  Future,"  Alienist  and  Neurologist,  Feb.,  1904. 


SEXUAL     EDUCATION.  73 

cially  of  standing;  plenty  of  outdoor  exercise — tennis,  boating,  cycling, 
gymnastics,  and  walking  for  those  who  cannot  afford  these;  regularity 
of  meals  and  food  of  the  proper  quality — not  the  incessant  tea  and  bread 
and  butter  with  variation  of  pastry;  the  avoidance  of  overexertion  and 
prolonged  fatigue;  these  are  some  of  the  principal  things  which  require 
attention.  Let  girls  pursue  their  study,  but  more  leisurely;  they  will 
arrive  at  the  same  goal,  but  a  little  later."  The  benefit  of  allowing 
free  movement  and  exercise  to  the  whole  body  is  undoubtedly  very  great, 
both  as  regards  the  sexual  and  general  physical  health  and  the  mental 
balance;  in  order  to  insure  this  it  is  necessary  to  avoid  heavy  and  con- 
stricting garments,  more  especially  around  the  chest,  for  it  is  in  respira- 
tory power  and  chest  expansion  more  than  in  any  other  respect  that 
girls  fall  behind  boys  (see,  e.g.,  Havelock  Ellis,  Man  and  Woman,  Ch. 
IX).  In  old  days  the  great  obstacle  to  the  free  exercise  of  girls  lay  in 
an  ideal  of  feminine  behavior  which  involved  a  prim  restraint  on  every 
natural  movement  of  the  body.  At  the  present  day  that  ideal  is  not  so 
fervently  preached  as  of  old,  but  its  traditional  influence  still  to  some 
extent  persists,  while  there  is  the  further  difficulty  that  adequate  time 
and  opportunity  and  encouragement  are  by  no  means  generally  afforded 
to  girls  for  the  cultivation  and  training  of  the  romping  instincts  which 
are  really  a  serious  part  of  education,  for  it  is  by  such  free  exercise  of 
the  whole  body  that  the  neuro-muscular  system,  the  basis  of  all  vital 
activity,  is  built  up.  The  neglect  of  such  education  is  to-day  clearly 
visible  in  the  structure  of  our  women.  Dr.  F.  May  Dickinson  Berry, 
Medical  Examiner  to  the  Technical  Education  Board  of  the  London 
County  Council,  found  (British  Medical  Journal,  May  28,  1904)  among 
over  1,500  girls,  who  represent  the  flower  of  the  schools,  since  they  had 
obtained  scholarships  enabling  them  to  proceed  to  higher  grade  schools, 
that  22  per  cent,  presented  some  degree,  not  always  pronounced,  of 
lateral  curvature  of  the  spine,  though  such  cases  were  very  rare  among 
the  boys.  In  the  same  way  among  a  very  similar  class  of  select  girls 
at  the  Chicago  Normal  School,  Miss  Lura  Sanborn  (Doctors'  Magazine, 
Dec,  1900)  found  17  per  cent,  with  spinal  curvature,  in  some  cases  of 
a  very  pronounced  degree.  There  is  no  reason  why  a  girl  should  not 
have  as  straight  a  back  as  a  boy,  and  the  cause  can  only  lie  in  the 
defective  muscular  development  which  was  found  in  most  of  the  cases, 
sometimes  accompanied  by  ansemia.  Here  and  there  nowadays,  among 
the  better  social  classes,  there  is  ample  provision  for  the  development  of 
muscular  power  in  girls,  but  in  any  generalized  way  there  is  no  adequate 
opportunity  for  such  exercise,  and  among  the  working  class,  above 
all,  in  the  section  of  it  which  touches  the  lower  middle  class,  although 
their  lives  are  destined  to  be  filled  with  a  constant  strain  on  the  neuro- 
muscular system  from  work  at  home  or  in  shops,  etc.,  there  is  usually 
a  minimum  of  healthy  exercise  and  physical  development.     Dr.  W.  A. 


74  '         PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

B.  Sellman,  of  Baltimore  ("Causes  of  Painful  Menstruation  in  Unmar- 
ried Women,"  American  Journal  Obstetrics,  Nov.,  1907),  emphasizes  the 
admirable  results  obtained  by  moderate  physical  exercise  for  young 
women,  and  in  training  them  to  care  for  their  bodies  and  to  rest  their 
nervous  systems,  while  Dr.  Charlotte  Brown,  of  San  Francisco,  rightly  in- 
sists on  the  establishment  in  all  towns  and  villages  alike  of  outdoor  gym- 
nastic fields  for  women  and  girls,  and  of  a  building,  in  connection  with 
every  large  school,  for  training  in  physical,  manual,  and  domestic 
science.  The  provision  of  special  playgrounds  is  necessary  where  the 
exercising  of  girls  is  so  unfamiliar  as  to  cause  an  embarrassing  amount 
of  attention  from  the  opposite  sex,  though  when  it  is  an  immemorial 
custom  it  can  be  carried  out  on  the  village  green  without  attracting  the 
slightest  attention,  as  I  have  seen  in  Spain,  where  one  cannot  fail  to 
connect  it  with  the  physical  vigor  of  the  women.  In  boys'  schools  games 
are  not  only  encouraged,  but  made  compulsory;  but  this  is  by  no  means 
a  universal  rule  in  girls'  schools.  It  is  not  necessary,  and  is  indeed 
highly  undesirable,  that  the  gajnes  adopted  should  be  those  of  boys.  In 
England  especially,  where  the  movements  of  women  are  so  often  marked 
by  awkwardness,  angularity  and  lack  of  grace,  it  is  essential  that  noth- 
ing should  be  done  to  emphasize  these  characteristics,  for  where  vigor 
involves  violence  we  are  in  the  presence  of  a  lack  of  due  neuromuscular 
coordination.  Swimming,  when  possible,  and  especially  some  forms  of 
dancing,  are  admirably  adapted  to  develop  the  bodily  movements  of 
women  both  vigorously  and  harmoniously  (see,  e.g.,  Havelock  Ellis,  Man 
and  Woman,  Ch.  VII).  At  the  International  Congress  of  School 
Hygiene  in  1907  (see,  e.g.,  British  Medical  Journal,  Aug.  24,  1907)  Dr. 
L.  n.  Gulick,  formerly  Director  of  Physical  Training  in  the  Public 
Schools  of  New  York  City,  stated  that  after  many  experiments  it  had 
>een  found  in  the  New  York  elementary  and  high  schools  that  folk-danc- 
ing constituted  the  very  best  exercise  for  girls.  "The  dances  selected 
involved  many  contractions  of  the  large  muscular  masses  of  the  body  and 
had  therefore  a  great  effect  on  respiration,  circulation  and  nutrition. 
Such  movements,  moreover,  when  done  as  dances,  could  be  carried  on 
three  or  four  times  as  long  without  producing  fatigue  as  formal  gym- 
nastics. Many  folk-dances  were  imitative,  sowing  and  reaping  dance, 
dances  expressing  trade  movements  ( the  shoemaker's  dance ) ,  others 
illustrating  attack  and  defense,  or  the  pursuit  of  game.  Such  neuro- 
muscular movements  were  racially  old  and  fitted  in  with  man's  expres- 
sive life,  and  if  it  were  accepted  that  the  folk-dances  really  expressed 
an  epitome  of  man's  neuromuscular  history,  as  distinguished  from 
mere  permutation  of  movements,  the  folk-dance  combinations  should  be 
preferred  on  these  biological  grounds  to  the  un  selected,  or  even  the 
physiologically  selected.  From  the  aesthetic  point  of  view  the  sense  of 
beauty  as  shown  in  dancing  was  far  commoner  than  the  power  to  sing, 
paint  or  model." 


SEXUAL     EDUCATION.  75 

It  must  always  be  remembered  that  in  realizing  the  especial 
demands  of  woman's  nature,  we  do  not  commit  ourselves  to  the 
belief  that  higher  education  is  unfitted  for  a  woman.  That 
question  may  now  be  regarded  as  settled.  There  is  therefore  no 
longer  any  need  for  the  feverish  anxiety  of  the  early  leaders  of 
feminine  education  to  prove  that  girls  can  be  educated  exactly  as 
if  they  were  boys,  and  yield  at  least  as  good  educational  results. 
At  the  present  time,  indeed,  that  anxiety  is  not  only  unnecessary 
but  mischievous.  It  is  now  more  necessary  to  show  that  women 
have  special  needs  just  as  men  have  special  needs,  and  that  it  is  as 
bad  for  women,  and  therefore,  for  the  world,  to  force  them  to 
accept  the  special  laws  and  limitations  of  men  as  it  would  be  bad 
for  men,  and  therefore,  for  the  world,  to  force  men  to  accept  the 
special  laws  and  limitations  of  women.  Each  sex  must  seek  to 
reach  the  goal  by  following  the  laws  of  its  own  nature,  even 
although  it  remains  desirable  that,  both  in  the  school  and  in  the 
world,  they  should  work  so  far  as  possible  side  by  side.  The  great 
fact  to  be  remembered  always  is  that,  not  only  are  women,  in 
physical  size  and  physical  texture,  slighter  and  finer  than  men, 
but  that  to  an  extent  altogether  unknown  among  men,  their 
centre  of  gravity  is  apt  to  be  deflected  by  the  series  of  rhythmic 
sexual  curves  on  which  they  are  always  living.  They  are  thus 
more  delicately  poised  and  any  kind  of  stress  or  strain — cerebral, 
nervous,  or  muscular — is  more  likely  to  produce  serious  disturb- 
ance and  requires  an  accurate  adjustment  to  their  special  needs. 

The  fact  that  it  is  stress  and  strain  in  general,  and  not  necessarily 
educational  studies,  that  are  injurious  to  adolescent  women,  is  suffi- 
ciently proved,  if  proof  is  necessary,  by  the  fact  that  sexual  arrest,  and 
physical  or  nervous  breakdown,  occur  with  extreme  frequency  in  girls 
who  work  in  shops  or  mills,  even  in  girls  who  have  never  been  to  school 
at  all.  Even  excesses  in  athletics — which  now  not  infrequently  occur  as 
a  reaction  against  woman's  indifference  to  physical  exercise — are  bad. 
Cycling  is  beneficial  for  women  who  can  ride  without  pain  or  discom- 
fort, and,  according  to  Watkins,  it  is  even  beneficial  in  many  diseased 
and  disordered  pelvic  conditions,  but  excessive  cycling  is  evil  in  its 
results  on  women,  more  especially  by  inducing  rigidity  of  the  perineum 
to  an  extent  which  may  even  prevent  childbirth  and  necessitate  opera- 
tion.    I  may  add  that  the  same  objection  applies  to  much  horse-rid- 


76  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SES. 

ing.  In  the  Bame  way  everything  which  causes  shocks  to  the  body 
is  apt  to  be  dangerous  to  women,  since  in  the  womb  they  possess 
a  delicately  poised  organ  which  varies  in  weight  at  different  times,  and 
it  would,  for  instance,  be  impossible  to  commend  football  as  a  game  for 
girls.  "I  do  not  believe,"  wrote  Miss  H.  Ballantine,  Director  of  Vassar 
College  Gymnasium,  to  Prof.  W.  Thomas  {Sex  and  Society,  p.  22) 
"women  can  ever,  no  matter  what  the  training,  approach  men  in  their 
physical  achievements;  and,"  she  wisely  adds,  "I  see  no  reason  why 
they  should."  There  seem,  indeed,  as  has  already  been  indicated,  to  be 
reasons  why  they  should  not,  especially  if  they  look  forward  to  becom- 
ing mothers.  I  have  noticed  that  women  who  have  lived  a  very  robust 
and  athletic  outdoor  life,  so  far  from  always  having  the  easy  confine- 
ments which  we  might  anticipate,  sometimes  have  very  seriously  difficult 
times,  imperilling  the  life  of  the  child.  On  making  this  observation  to 
a  distinguished  obstetrician,  the  late  Dr.  Engelmann,  who  was  an  ardent 
advocate  of  physical  exercise  for  women  (in  e.g.  his  presidential  address, 
"The  Health  of  the  American  Girl,"  Transactions  Southern  Surgical  and 
Gynaecological  Association,  1890),  he  replied  that  he  had  himself  made 
the  same  observation,  and  that  instructors  in  physical  training,  both  in 
America  and  England,  had  also  told  him  of  such  cases  among  their 
pupils.  "I  hold,"  he  wrote,  "precisely  the  opinion  you  express  [as  to 
the  unfavorable  influence  of  muscular  development  in  women].  Ath- 
letics, i.e.,  overdone  physical  training,  causes  the  girl's  system  to 
approximate  to  the  masculine;  this  is  so  whether  due  to  sport  or 
necessity.  The  woman  who  indulges  in  it  approximates  to  the  male  in 
her  attributes;  this  is  marked  in  diminished  sexual  intensity,  and  in 
increased  difficulty  of  childbirth,  with,  in  time,  lessened  fecundity. 
Healthy  habits  improve,  but  masculine  muscular  development  diminishes, 
womanly  qualities,  although  it  is  true  that  the  peasant  and  the  laboring 
woman  have  easy  labor.  I  have  never  advocated  muscular  development 
for  girls,  only  physical  training,  but  have  perhaps  said  too  much  for  it 
and  praised  it  too  unguardedly.  In  schools  and  colleges,  so  far,  how- 
ever, it  is  insufficient  rather  than  too  much;  only  the  Avealthy  have  too 
much  golf  and  athletic  sports.  I  am  collecting  new  material,  but  from 
what  I  already  have  seen  I  am  impressed  with  the  truth  of  what  you 
say.  I  am  studying  the  point,  and  shall  elaborate  the  explanation." 
Any  publication  on  this  subject  was,  however,  prevented  by  Engelmann's 
death  a  few  years  later. 

A  proper  recognition  of  the  special  nature  of  woman,  of  her 
peculiar  needs  and  her  dignity,  has  a  significance  beyond  its 
importance  in  education  and  hygiene.  The  traditions  and  train- 
ing to  which  she  is  subjected  in  this  matter  have  a  subtle  and 


SEXUAL     EDUCATION.  77 

far-reaching  significance,  according  as  they  are  good  or  evil.  If 
she  is  taught,  implicitly  or  explicitly,  contempt  for  the  character- 
istics of  her  own  sex,  she  naturally  develops  masculine  ideals 
which  may  permanently  discolor  her  vision  of  life  and  distort  her 
practical  activities;  it  has  been  found  that  as  many  as  fifty  per 
cent,  of  American  school  girls  have  masculine  ideals,  while  fifteen 
per  cent.  American  and  no  fewer  than  thirty-four  per  cent. 
English  school  girls  wished  to  be  men,  though  scarcely  any  boys 
wished  to  be  women.1  With  the  same  tendency  may  be  con- 
nected that  neglect  to  cultivate  the  emotions,  which,  by  a 
mischievously  extravagant  but  inevitable  reaction  from  the 
opposite  extreme,  has  sometimes  marked  the  modern  training  of 
women.  In  the  finely  developed  woman,  intelligence  is  inter- 
penetrated with  emotion.  If  there  is  an  exaggerated  and 
isolated  culture  of  intelligence  a  tendency  shows  itself  to  dis- 
harmony which  breaks  up  the  character  or  impairs  its  complete- 
ness. In  this  connection  Eeibmayr  has  remarked  that  the 
American  woman  may  serve  as  a  warning.2  Within  the  emo- 
tional sphere  itself,  it  may  be  added,  there  is  a  tendency  to 
disharmony  in  women  owing  to  the  contradictory  nature  of  the 
feelings  which  are  traditionally  impressed  upon  her,  a  contra- 
diction which  dates  back  indeed  to  the  identification  of  sacred- 
ness  and  impurity  at  the  dawn  of  civilization.  "Every  girl  and 
woman,"  wrote  Hellmann,  in  a  pioneering  book  which  pushed  a 
sound  principle  to  eccentric  extremes,  "is  taught  to  regard  her 
sexual  parts  as  a  precious  and  sacred  spot,  only  to  be  approached 
by  a  husband  or  in  special  circumstances  a  doctor.  She  is,  at 
the  same  time,  taught  to  regard  this  spot  as  a  kind  of  water-closet 
which  she  ought  to  be  extremely  ashamed  to  possess,  and  the  mere 
mention  of  which  should  cause  a  painful  blush."3     The  average 

i  W.  G.  Chambers,  "The  Evolution  of  Ideals,"  Pedagogical  Semi- 
nary, March,  1903;  Catherine  Dodd,  "School  Children's  Ideals,"  Na- 
tional Revieio,  Feb.  and  Dec,  1900,  and  June,  1901.  No  German  girls 
acknowledged  a  wish  to  be  men ;  they  said  it  would  be  wicked.  Among 
Flemish  girls,  however,  Varendonck  found  at  Ghent  {Archives  de  Psy- 
chologic, July,  1908)   that  26  per  cent,  had  men  as  their  ideals. 

2  A.  Reibmavr,  Die  Entwiclclungsgeschichte  des  Talentes  und  Qenies, 
1908,  Bd.  i,  p.  70.' 

3R.  Hellmann,  Ueber  Q-eschlechlsfreiheit,  p.  14. 


78  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

unthinking  woman  accepts  the  incongruity  of  this  opposition 
without  question,  and  grows  accustomed  to  adapt  herself  to  each, 
of  the  incompatibles  according  to  circumstances.  The  more 
thoughtful  woman  works  out  a  private  theory  of  her  own.  But 
in  very  many  cases  this  mischievous  opposition  exerts  a  subtly 
perverting  influence  on  the  whole  outlook  towards  Nature  and 
life.  In  a  few  cases,  also,  in  women  of  sensitive  temperament,  it 
even  undermines  and  ruins  the  psychic  personality. 

Thus  Boris  Sidis  has  recorded  a  case  illustrating  the  disastrous 
results  of  inculcating  on  a  morbidly  sensitive  girl  the  doctrine  of  the 
impurity  of  women.  She  was  educated  in  a  convent.  "While  there  she 
was  impressed  with  the  belief  that  woman  is  a  vessel  of  vice  and 
impurity.  This  seemed  to  have  been  imbued  in  her  by  one  of  the  nuns 
who  was  very  holy  and  practiced  self-mortification.  With  the  onset  of 
her  periods,  and  with  the  observation  of  the  same  in  the  other  girls, 
this  doctrine  of  female  impurity  was  all  the  stronger  impressed  on  her 
sensitive  mind."  It  lapsed,  however,  from  conscious  memory  and  only 
came  to  the  foreground  in  subsequent  years  with  the  exhaustion  and 
fatigue  of  prolonged  office  work.  Then  she  married.  Now  "she  has  an 
extreme  abhorrence  of  women.  Woman,  to  the  patient,  is  impurity, 
filth,  the  very  incarnation  of  degradation  and  vice.  The  house  wash 
must  not  be  given  to  a  laundry  where  women  work.  Nothing  must  be 
picked  up  in  the  street,  not  even  the  most  valuable  object,  perchance 
it  might  have  been  dropped  by  a  woman"  (Boris  Sidis,  "Studies  in 
Psychopathology,"  Boston  Medical  and  Surgical  Journal,  April  4,  1907 ) . 
That  is  the  logical  outcome  of  much  of  the  traditional  teaching  which 
is  given  to  girls.  Fortunately,  the  healthy  mind  offers  a  natural  resist- 
ance to  its  complete  acceptation,  yet  it  usually,  in  some  degree,  persists 
and  exerts  a  mischievous  influence. 

It  is,  however,  not  only  in  her  relations  to  herself  and  to 
her  sex  that  a  girl's  thoughts  and  feelings  tend  to  be  distorted 
by  the  ignorance  or  the  false  traditions  by  which  she  is  so  often 
carefully  surrounded.  Her  happiness  in  marriage,  her  whole 
future  career,  is  put  in  peril.  The  innocent  young  woman  must 
always  risk  much  in  entering  the  door  of  indissoluble  marriage ; 
she  knows  nothing  truly  of  her  husband,  she  knows  nothing  of  the 
great  laws  of  love,  she  knows  nothing  of  her  own  possibilities,  and, 
worse  still,  she  is  even  ignorant  of  her  ignorance.  She  runs  the 
risk  of  losing  the  game  while  she  is  still  only  beginning  to  learn 


SEXUAL    EDUCATION".  79 

it.  To  some  extent  that  is  quite  inevitable  if  we  are  to  insist  that 
a  woman  should  bind  herself  to  marry  a  man  before  she  has 
experienced  the  nature  of  the  forces  that  marriage  may  unloose  in 
her.  A  young  girl  believes  she  possesses  a  certain  character ;  she 
arranges  her  future  in  accordance  with  that  character;  she 
marries.  Then,  in  a  considerable  proportion  of  cases  (five  out  of 
six,  according  to  the  novelist  Bourget),  within  a  year  or  even  a 
week,  she  finds  she  was  completely  mistaken  in  herself  and  in  the 
man  she  has  married ;  she  discovers  within  her  another  self,  and 
that  self  detests  the  man  to  whom  she  is  bound.  That  is  a 
possible  fate  against  which  only  the  woman  who  has  already  been 
aroused  to  love  is  entitled  to  regard  herself  as  fairly  protected. 

There  is,  however,  a  certain  kind  of  protection  which  it  is 
possible  to  afford  the  bride,  even  without  departing  from  our 
most  conventional  conceptions  of  marriage.  We  can  at  least 
insist  that  she  shall  be  accurately  informed  as  to  the  exact 
nature  of  her  physical  relations  to  her  future  husband  and  be 
safeguarded  from  the  shocks  or  the  disillusions  which  marriage 
might  otherwise  bring.  Notwithstanding  the  decay  of  preju- 
dices, it  is  probable  that  even  to-day  the  majority  of  women 
of  the  so-called  educated  class  marry  with  only  the  vaguest  and 
most  inaccurate  notions,  picked  up  more  or  less  clandestinely, 
concerning  the  nature  of  the  sexual  relationships.  So  highly 
intelligent  a  woman  as  Madame  Adam  has  stated  that  she 
believed  herself  bound  to  marry  a  man  who  had  kissed  her  on 
the  mouth,  imagining  that  to  be  the  supreme  act  of  sexual  union,1 
and  it  has  frequently  happened  that  women  have  married 
sexually  inverted  persons  of  their  own  sex,  not  always  knowingly, 
but  believing  them  to  be  men,  and  never  discovering  their 
mistake ;  it  is  not  long  indeed  since  in  America  three  women  were 
thus  successively  married  to  the  same  woman,  none  of  them 
apparently  ever  finding  out  the  real  sex  of  the  "husband."  "The 
civilized  girl,"  as  Edward   Carpenter  remarks,   "is  led  to  the 


l  This  belief  seems  frequent  among  young  girls  in  Continental 
Europe.  It  forms  the  subject  of  one  of  Marcel  Prevost's  Lettres  de 
Femmes.  In  Austria,  according  to  Freud,  it  is  not  uncommon,  exclu- 
sively among  girls. 


80  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

'altar'  often  in  uttermost  ignorance  and  misunderstanding  of  the 
sacrificial  rites  about  to  be  consummated."  Certainly  more 
rapes  have  been  effected  in  marriage  than  outside  it.1  The  girl 
is  full  of  vague  and  romantic  faith  in  the  promises  of  love,  often 
heightened  by  the  ecstasies  depicted  in  sentimental  novels  from 
which  every  touch  of  wholesome  reality  has  been  carefully 
omitted.  "All  the  candor  of  faith  is  there/'  as  Senancour  puts 
it  in  his  book  De  V Amour,  "the  desires  of  inexperience,  the  needs 
of  a  new  life,  the  hopes  of  an  upright  heart.  She  has  all  the 
faculties  of  love,  she  must  love;  she  has  all  the  means  of 
pleasure,  she  must  be  loved.  Everything  expresses  love  and 
demands  love :  this  hand  formed  for  sweet  caresses,  an  e}^e  whose 
resources  are  unknown  if  it  must  not  say  that  it  consents  to  be 
loved,  a  bosom  which  is  motionless  and  useless  without  love,  and 
will  fade  without  having  been  worshipped;  these  feelings  that 
are  so  vast,  so  tender,  so  voluptuous,  the  ambition  of  the  heart, 
the  heroism  of  passion !  She  needs  must  follow  the  delicious 
rule  which  the  law  of  the  world  has  dictated.  That  intoxicating 
part,  which  she  knows  so  well,  which  everything  recalls,  which  the 
day  inspires  and  the  night  commands,  what  young,  sensitive, 
loving  woman  can  imagine  that  she  shall  not  play  it?"  But 
when  the  actual  drama  of  love  begins  to  unroll  before  her,  and  she 
realizes  the  true  nature  of  the  "intoxicating  part"  she  has  to  play, 
then,  it  has  often  happened,  the  case  is  altered ;  she  finds  herself 
altogether  unprepared,  and  is  overcome  with  terror  and  alarm. 
All  the  felicity  of  her  married  life  may  then  hang  on  a  few 
chances,  her  husband's  skill  and  consideration,  her  own  presence 
of  mind.  Hirschfeld  records  the  case  of  an  innocent  young  girl 
of  seventeen — in  this  case,  it  eventually  proved,  an  invert — who 
was  persuaded  to  marry  but  on  discovering  what  marriage  meant 
energetically    resisted    her    husband's    sexual    approaches.     He 


1  Yet,  according  to  English  law,  rape  is  a  crime  which  it  is  impos- 
sible for  a  husband  to  commit  on  his  wife  (see,  e.g.,  Nevill  Geary,  The 
Law  of  Marriage,  Ch.  XV,  Sect.  V ) .  The  performance  of  the  marriage 
ceremony,  however,  even  if  it  necessarily  involved  a  clear  explanation  of 
marital  privileges,  cannot  be  regarded  as  adequate  justification  for  an 
act  of  sexual  intercourse  performed  with  violence  or  without  the  wife's 
consent. 


SEXUAL     EDUCATION.  81 

appealed  to  her  mother  to  explain  to  her  daughter  the  nature  of 
"wifely  duties."  But  the  young  wife  replied  to  her  mother's 
expostulations,  "If  that  is  my  wifely  duty  then  it  was  your 
parental  duty  to  have  told  me  beforehand,  for,  if  I  had  known,  I 
should  never  have  married."  The  husband  in  this  case,  much  in 
love  with  his  wife,  sought  for  eight  years  to  over-persuade  her, 
but  in  vain,  and  a  separation  finally  took  place.1  That,  no 
doubt,  is  an  extreme  case,  but  how  many  innocent  young  inverted 
girls  never  realize  their  true  nature  until  after  marriage,  and 
how  many  perfectly  normal  girls  are  so  shocked  by  the  too 
sudden  initiation  of  marriage  that  their  beautiful  early  dreams  of 
love  never  develop  slowly  and  wholesomely  into  the  acceptance 
of  its  still  more  beautiful  realities? 

Before  the  age  of  puberty  it  would  seem  that  the  sexual 
initiation  of  the  child — apart  from  such  scientific  information  as 
would  form  part  of  school  courses  in  botany  and  zoology — should 
be  the  exclusive  privilege  of  the  mother,  or  whomever  it  may  be  to 
whom  the  mother's  duties  are  delegated.  At  puberty  more 
authoritative  and  precise  advice  is  desirable  than  the  mother  may 
be  able  or  willing  to  give.  It  is  at  this  age  that  she  should  put 
into  her  son's  or  daughter's  hands  some  one  or  other  of  the  very 
numerous  manuals  to  which  reference  has  already  been  made 
(page  53),  expounding  the  physical  and  moral  aspects  of  the 
sexual  life  and  the  principles  of  sexual  hygiene.  The  boy  or 
girl  is  already,  we  may  take  it,  acquainted  with  the  facts  of 
motherhood,  and  the  origin  of  babies,  as  well  as,  more  or  less 
precisely,  with  the  father's  part  in  their  procreation.  Whatever 
manual  is  now  placed  in  his  or  her  hands  should  at  least  deal 


i  Hirschfeld,  Jahrbuch  fur  Sexuelle  Zwischenstufen,  1903,  p.  88. 
It  may  be  added  that  a  horror  of  coitus  is  not  necessarily  due  to  bad 
education,  and  may  also  occur  in  hereditarily  degenerate  women,  whose 
ancestors  have  shown  similar  or  allied  mental  peculiarities.  A  ease  of 
such  "functional  impotence"  has  been  reported  in  a  young  Italian  wife 
of  twenty-one,  who  was  otherwise  healthy,  and  strongly  attached  to  hev 
husband.  The  marriage  was  annulled  on  the  ground  that  "rudimentary 
sexual  or  emotional  paranoia,  which  renders  a  wife  invincibly  refractory 
to  sexual  union,  notwithstanding  the  integrity  of  the  sexual  organs,  con- 
stitutes psvehic  functional  impotence"  (ArcMvio  di  PsinWatria,  1906, 
fasc.  vi,  p.*806).  "  ,  —  &  ff 

8  13  I  ^oo 


82  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

summarily,  but  definitely,  with,  the  sexual  relationship,  and 
should  also  comment,  warningly  but  in  no  alarmist  spirit,  with 
the  chief  auto-erotic  phenomena,  and  by  no  means  exclusively 
with  masturbation.  Nothing  but  good  can  come  of  the  use  of 
such  a  manual,  if  it  has  been  wisely  selected;  it  will  supplant 
what  the  mother  has  already  done,  what  the  teacher  may  still  be 
doing,  and  what  later  may  be  done  by  private  interview  with  a 
doctor.  It  has  indeed  been  argued  that  the  boy  or  girl  to  whom 
such  literature  is  presented  will  merely  make  it  an  opportunity 
for  morbid  revelry  and  sensual  enjoyment.  It  can  well  be 
believed  that  this  may  sometimes  happen  with  boys  or  girls  from 
whom  all  sexual  facts  have  always  been  mysteriously  veiled,  and 
that  when  at  last  they  find  the  opportunity  of  gratifying  their 
long-repressed  and  perfectly  natural  curiosity  they  are  overcome 
by  the  excitement  of  the  event.  It  could  not  happen  to  children 
who  have  been  naturally  and  wholesomely  brought  up.  At  a 
later  age,  during  adolescence,  there  is  doubtless  great  advantage 
in  the  plan,  now  frequently  adopted,  especially  in  Germany,  of 
giving  lectures,  addresses,  or  quiet  talks  to  young  people  of  each 
sex  separately.  The  speaker  is  usually  a  specially  selected 
teacher,  a  doctor  or  other  qualified  person  who  may  be  brought 
in  for  this  special  purpose. 

Stanley  Hall,  after  remarking  that  sexual  education  should  be 
chiefly  from  fathers  to  sons  and  from  mothers  to  daughters,  adds:  "It 
may  be  that  in  the  future  this  kind  of  initiation  will  again  become  an 
art,  and  experts  will  tell  us  with  more  confidence  how  to  do  our  duty 
to  the  manifold  exigencies,  types  and  stages  of  youth,  and  instead  of 
feeling  baffled  and  defeated,  we  shall  see  that  this  age  and  theme  is  the 
supreme  opening  for  the  highest  pedagogy  to  do  its  best  and  most  trans- 
forming work,  as  well  as  being  the  greatest  of  all  opportunities  for  the 
teacher  of  religion"  (Stanley  Hall,  Adolescence,  vol.  i,  p.  469).  "At 
Williams  College,  Harvard,  Johns  Hopkins  and  Clark,"  the  same  distin- 
guished teacher  observes  (ib.,  p.  465),  "I  have  made  it  a  duty  in  my 
departmental  teaching  to  speak  very  briefly,  but  plainly  to  young  men 
under  my  instruction,  personally  if  I  deemed  it  wise,  and  often,  though 
here  only  in  general  terms,  before  student  bodies,  and  I  believe  I  have 
nowhere  done  more  good,  but  it  is  a  painful  duty.  It  requires  tact  and 
some  degree  of  hard  and  strenuous  common  sense  rather  than  technical 
knowledge." 


SEXUAL    EDUCATION".  83 

It  is  scarcely  necessary  to  say  that  the  ordinary  teacher  of  either 
sex  is  quite  incompetent  to  speak  of  sexual  hygiene.  It  is  a  task  to 
which  all,  or  some,  teachers  must  be  trained.  A  beginning  in  this 
direction  has  been  made  in  Germany  by  the  delivery  to  teachers  of 
courses  of  lectures  on  sexual  hygiene  in  education.  In  Prussia  the  first 
attempt  was  made  in  Breslau  when  the  central  school  authorities 
requested  Dr.  Martin  Chotzen  to  deliver  such  a  course  to  one  hundred 
and  fifty  teachers  who  took  the  greatest  interest  in  the  lectures,  which 
covered  the  anatomy  of  the  sexual  organs,  the  development  of  the  sexual 
instinct,  its  chief  perversions,  venereal  diseases,  and  the  importance  of 
the  cultivation  of  self-control.  In  Geschlecht  und  Gesellschaft  (Bd.  i, 
Heft  7)  Dr.  Fritz  Reuther  gives  the  substance  of  lectures  which  he  has 
delivered  to  a  class  of  young  teachers ;  they  cover  much  the  same  ground 
as  Chotzen's. 

There  is  no  evidence  that  in  England  the  Minister  of  Education 
has  yet  taken  any  steps  to  insure  the  delivery  of  lectures  on  sexual 
hygiene  to  the  pupils  who  are  about  to  leave  school.  In  Prussia,  how- 
ever, the  Ministry  of  Education  has  taken  an  active  interest  in  this 
matter,  and  such  lectures  are  beginning  to  be  commonly  delivered,  though 
attendance  at  them  is  not  usually  obligatory.  Some  years  ago  (in 
1900),  when  it  was  proposed  to  deliver  a  series  of  lectures  on  sexual 
hygiene  to  the  advanced  pupils  in  Berlin  schools,  under  the  auspices  of 
a  society  for  the  improvement  of  morals,  the  muncipal  authorities  with- 
drew their  permission  to  use  the  classrooms,  on  the  ground  that  "such 
lectures  would  be  extremely  dangerous  to  the  moral  sense  of  an  audience 
of  the  young."  The  same  objection  has  been  made  by  municipal  officials 
in  France.  In  Germany,  at  all  events,  however,  opinion  is  rapidly  grow- 
ing more  enlightened.  In  England  little  or  no  progress  has  yet  been 
made,  but  in  America  steps  are  being  taken  in  this  direction,  as  by  the 
Chicago  Society  for  Social  Hygiene.  It  must,  indeed,  be  said  that  those 
who  oppose  the  sexual  enlightenment  of  youth  in  large  cities  are  directly 
allying  themselves,  whether  or  not  they  know  it,  with  the  influences  that 
make  for  vice  and  immorality. 

Such  lectures  are  also  given  to  girls  on  leaving  school,  not  only  girls 
of  the  well-to-do,  but  also  those  of  the  poor  class,  who  need  them  fully  as 
much,  and  in  some  respects  more.  Thus  Dr.  A.  Heidenhain  has  pub- 
lished a  lecture  (Sexuelle  Belehrung  der  aus  den  Volksschule  entlassenen 
?Jadchen,  1907),  accompanied  by  anatomical  tables,  which  he  has  deliv- 
ered to  girls  about  to  leave  school,  and  which  is  intended  to  be  put  into 
their  hands  at  this  time.  Salvat,  in  a  Lyons  thesis  {La  Depopulation 
de  la  France,  1903),  insists  that  the  hygiene  of  pregnancy  and  the  care 
cf  infants  should  form  part  of  the  subject  of  such  lectures.  These  sub- 
jects might  well  be  left,  however,  to  a  somewhat  later  period. 


84  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

Something  is  clearly  needed  beyond  lectures  on  these 
matters.  It  should  be  the  business  of .  the  parents  or  other 
guardians  of  every  adolescent  youth  and  girl  to  arrange  that, 
once  at  least  at  this  period  of  life,  there  should  be  a  private, 
personal  interview  with  a  medical  man  to  afford  an  opportunity 
for  a  friendly  and  confidential  talk  concerning  the  main  points 
of  sexual  hygiene.  The  family  doctor  would  be  the  best  for  this 
duty  because  he  would  be  familiar  with  the  personal  temperament 
of  the  youth  and  the  family  tendencies.1  In  the  case  of  girls  a 
woman  doctor  would  often  be  preferred.  Sex  is  properly  a 
mystery ;  and  to  the  unspoilt  youth,  it  is  instinctively  so ;  except 
in  an  abstract  and  technical  form  it  cannot  properly  form  the 
subject  of  lectures.  In  a  private  and  individualized  conversation 
between  the  novice  in  life  and  the  expert,  it  is  possible  to  say 
many  necessary  things  that  could  not  be  said  in  public,  and  it  is 
possible,  moreover,  for  the  youth  to  ask  questions  which  shyness 
and  reserve  make  it  impossible  to  put  to  parents,  while  the  con- 
venient opportunity  of  putting  them  naturally  to  the  expert 
otherwise  seldom  or  never  occurs.  Most  youths  have  their  own 
special  ignorances,  their  own  special  difficulties,  difficulties  and 
ignorances  that  could  sometimes  be  resolved  by  a  word.  Yet  it 
by  no  means  infrequently  happens  that  they  carry  them  far  on 
into  adult  life  because  they  have  lacked  the  opportunity,  or  the 
skill  and  assurance  to  create  the  opportunity,  of  obtaining 
enlightenment. 

It  must  be  clearly  understood  that  these  talks  are  of  medical, 
hygienic,  and  physiological  character;  they  are  not  to  be  used 
for  retailing  moral  platitudes.  To  make  them  that  would  be  a 
fatal  mistake.  The  young  are  often  very  hostile  to  merely  con- 
ventional moral  maxims,  and  suspect  their  hollowness,  not 
always  without  reason.     The  end  to  be  aimed  at  here  is  enlighten- 


i  The  reasonableness  of  this  step  is  so  obvious  that  it  should 
scarcely  need  insistence.  "The  instruction  of  school-boys  and  school- 
girls is  most  adequately  effected  by  an  elderly  doctor,"  Naeke  remarks, 
"sometimes  perhaps  the  school-doctor."  "I  strongly  advocate,"  says 
Clouston  ( The  Hygiene  of  Mind,  p.  249 ) ,  "that  the  family  doctor,  guided 
by  the  parent  and  the  teacher,  is  by  far  the  best  instructor  and  monitor." 
Moll  is  of  the  same  opinion. 


SEXUAL     EDUCATION".  85 

ment.  Certainly  knowledge  can  never  be  immoral,  but  nothing  is 
gained  by  jumbling  up  knowledge  and  morality  together. 

In  emphasizing  the  nature  of  the  physician's  task  in  this 
matter  as  purely  and  simply  that  of  wise  practical  enlightenment, 
nothing  is  implied  against  the  advantages,  and  indeed  the 
immense  value  in  sexual  hygiene,  of  the  moral,  religious,  ideal 
elements  of  life.  It  is  not  the  primary  business  of  the  physician 
to  inspire  these,  but  they  have  a  very  intimate  relation  with  the 
sexual  life,  and  every  boy  and  girl  at  puberty,  and  never  before 
pubert3r,  should  be  granted  the  privilege — and  not  the  duty  or 
the  task — of  initiation  into  those  elements  of  the  world's  life 
which  are,  at  the  same  time,  natural  functions  of  the  adolescent 
soul.  Here,  however,  is  the  sphere  of  the  religious  or  ethical 
teacher.  At  puberty  he  has  his  great  opportunity,  the  greatest 
he  can  ever  obtain.  The  flower  of  sex  that  blossoms  in  the  body 
at  puberty  has  its  spiritual  counterpart  which  at  the  same 
moment  blossoms  in  the  soul.  The  churches  from  of  old  have 
recognized  the  religious  significance  of  this  moment,  for  it  is  this 
period  of  life  that  they  have  appointed  as  the  time  of  confirm- 
ation and  similar  rites.  With  the  progress  of  the  ages,  it  is  true, 
such  rites  become  merely  formal  and  apparently  meaningless 
fossils.  But  they  have  a  meaning  nevertheless,  and  are  capable 
of  being  again  vitalized.  ISTor  in  their  spirit  and  essence  should 
they  be  confined  to  those  who  accept  supernaturally  revealed 
religion.  They  concern  all  ethical  teachers,  wTho  must  realize 
that  it  is  at  puberty  that  they  are  called  upon  to  inspire  or  to 
fortify  the  gTeat  ideal  aspirations  which  at  this  period  tend 
spontaneously  to  arise  in  the  youth's  or  maiden's  soul.1 

The  age  of  puberty,  I  have  said,  marks  the  period  at  which 
this  new  kind  of  sexual  initiation  is  called  for.  Before  puberty, 
although  the  psychic  emotion  of  love  frequently  develops,  as  well 
as  sometimes  physical  sexual  emotions  that  are  mostly  vague 
and  diffused,  definite  and  localized  sexual  sensations  are  rare. 
For  the  normal  boy  or  girl  love  is  usually  an  unspecialized 
emotion;   it  is  in  Guyau's  words  "a  state  in  which  the  body  has 

1 1  have  further  developed  this  argument  in  "Religion  and  the 
Child/'  Nineteenth  Century  and  After,  1907. 


86  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

but  the  smallest  place."  At  the  first  rising  of  the  sun  of  sex  the 
boy  or  girl  sees,  as  Blake  said  he  saw  at  sunrise,  not  a  round 
yellow  body  emerging  above  the  horizon,  or  any  other  physical 
manifestation,  but  a  great  company  of  singing  angels.  With 
the  definite  eruption  of  physical  sexual  manifestation  and  desire, 
whether  at  puberty  or  later  in  adolescence,  a  new  turbulent  dis- 
turbing influence  appears.  Against  the  force  of  this  influence, 
mere  intellectual  enlightenment,  or  even  loving  maternal  counsel 
— the  agencies  we  have  so  far  been  concerned  with — may  be 
powerless.  In  gaining  control  of  it  we  must  find  our  auxiliary 
in  the  fact  that  puberty  is  the  efflorescence  not  only  of  a  new 
physical  but  a  new  psychic  force.  The  ideal  world  naturally 
unfolds  itself  to  the  boy  or  girl  at  puberty.  The  magic  of 
beauty,  the  instinct  of  modesty,  the  naturalness  of  self-restraint, 
the  idea  of  unselfish  love,  the  meaning  of  duty,  the  feeling  for 
art  and  poetry,  the  craving  for  religious  conceptions  and 
emotions — all  these  things  awake  spontaneously  in  the  unspoiled 
boy  or  girl  at  puberty.  I  say  "unspoiled/'  for  if  these  things 
have  been  thrust  on  the  child  before  puberty  when  they  have 
yet  no  meaning  for  him — as  is  unfortunately  far  too  often  done, 
more  especially  as  regards  religious  notions — then  it  is  but  too 
likely  that  he  will  fail  to  react  properly  at  that  moment  of  his 
development  when  he  would  otherwise  naturally  respond  to  them. 
Under  natural  conditions  this  is  the  period  for  spiritual 
initiation.  Now,  and  not  before,  is  the  time  for  the  religious  or 
ethical  teacher  as  the  case  may  be — for  all  religions  and  ethical 
systems  may  equally  adapt  themselves  to  this  task — to  take  the 
boy  or  girl  in  hand,  not  with  any  special  and  obtrusive  reference 
to  the  sexual  impulses  but  for  the  purpose  of  assisting  the 
development  and  manifestation  of  this  psychic  puberty,  of 
indirectly  aiding  the  young  soul  to  escape  from  sexual  dangers 
by  harnessing  his  chariot  to  a  star  that  may  help  to  save  it  from 
sticking  fast  in  any  miry  ruts  of  the  flesh. 

Such  an  initiation,  it  is  important  to  remark,  is  more  than 
an  introduction  to  the  sphere  of  religious  sentiment.  It  is  an 
initiation  into  manhood,  it  must  involve  a  recognition  of  the 
masculine  even  more  than  of  the  feminine  virtues.     This  has 


SEXUAL   EDUCATION.  87 

been  well  understood  by  the  finest  primitive  races.  They  con- 
stantly give  their  boys  and  girls  an  initiation  at  puberty;  it  is 
an  initiation  that  involves  not  merely  education  in  the  ordinary 
sense,  but  a  stern  discipline  of  the  character,  feats  of  endurance, 
the  trial  of  character,  the  testing  of  the  muscles  of  the  soul  as 
much  as  of  the  body. 

Ceremonies  of  initiation  into  manhood  at  puberty — involving 
physical  and  mental  discipline,  as  well  as  instruction,  lasting  for  weeks 
or  months,  and  never  identical  for  both  sexes — are  common  among 
savages  in  all  parts  of  the  world.  They  nearly  always  involve  the 
endurance  of  a  certain  amount  of  pain  and  hardship,  a  wise  measure 
of  training  which  the  softness  of  civilization  has  too  foolishly  allowed 
to  drop,  for  the  ability  to  endure  hardness  is  an  essential  condition  of 
all  real  manhood.  It  is  as  a  corrective  to  this  tendency  to  flabbiness 
in  modern  education  that  the  teaching  of  Nietzsche  is  so  invaluable. 

The  initiation  of  boys  among  the  natives  of  Torres  Straits  has 
been  elaborately  described  by  A.  C.  Haddon  (Reports  Anthropological 
Expedition  to  Torres  Straits,  vol.  v,  Chs.  VII  and  XII).  It  lasts  a 
month,  involves  much  severe  training  and  power  of  endurance,  and 
includes  admirable  moral  instruction.  Haddon  remarks  that  it  formed 
"a  very  good  discipline,"  and  adds,  "it  is  not  easy  to  conceive  of  a  more 
effectual  means  for  a  rapid  training." 

Among  the  aborigines  of  Victoria,  Australia,  the  initiatory  cere- 
monies, as  described  by  R.  H.  Mathews  ("Some  Initiation  Ceremonies," 
Zeitschrift  fur  Ethnologic,  1905,  Heft  6),  last  for  seven  months,  and  con- 
stitute an  admirable  discipline.  The  boys  are  taken  away  by  the  elders 
of  the  tribe,  subjected  to  many  trials  of  patience  and  endurance  of  pain 
and  discomfort,  sometimes  involving  even  the  swallowing  of  urine  and 
excrement,  brought  into  contact  with  strange  tribes,  taught  the  laws 
and  folk-lore,  and  at  the  end  meetings  are  held  at  which  betrothals  are 
arranged. 

Among  the  northern  tribes  of  Central  Australia  the  initiation 
ceremonies  involve  circumcision  and  urethral  subincision,  as  well  as 
hard  manual  labor  and  hardships.  The  initiation  of  girls  into  woman- 
hood is  accompanied  by  cutting  open  of  the  vagina.  These  ceremonies 
have  been  described  by  Spencer  and  Gillen  (Northern  Tribes  of  Central 
Australia,  Ch.  XI).  Among  various  peoples  in  British  East  Africa 
(including  the  Masai)  pubertal  initiation  is  a  great  ceremonial  event 
extending  over  a  period  of  many  months,  and  it  includes  circumcision 
in  boys,  and  in  girls  clitoridectomy,  as  well  as,  among  some  tribes, 
removal  of  the  nymphs.  A  girl  who  winces  or  cries  out  during  the 
operation  is  disgraced  among  the  women  and  expelled  from  the  settle- 


30  PSYCHOLOGY    OE    SEX. 

ment.  When  the  ceremony  has  been  satisfactorily  completed  the  boy  or 
girl  is  marriageable  (C.  Marsh  Beadnell,  "Circumcision  and  Clitori- 
dectomy  as  Practiced  by  the  Natives  of  British  East  Africa,"  British 
Medical  Journal,  April  29,  1905). 

Initiation  among  the  African  Bawenda,  as  described  by  a  mis- 
sionary, is  in  three  stages:  (1)  A  stage  of  instruction  and  discipline 
during  which  the  traditions  and  sacred  things  of  the  tribe  are  revealed, 
the  art  of  warfare  taught,  self-restraint  and  endurance  borne;  then  the 
youths  are  counted  as  full-grown.  (2)  In  the  next  stage  the  art  of 
dancing  is  practiced,  by  each  sex  separately,  during  the  day.  (3)  In 
the  final  stage,  which  is  that  of  complete  sexual  initiation,  the  two 
sexes  dance  together  by  night;  the  scene,  in  the  opinion  of  the  good 
missionary,  "does  not  bear  description;"  the  initiated  are  now  complete 
adults,  with  all  the  privileges  and  responsibilities  of  adults  (Rev.  E. 
Gottschling,  "The  Bawenda,"  Journal  Anthropological  Institution,  July 
to  Dec,  1905,  p.  372.  Cf.,  an  interesting  account  of  the  Bawenda  Tondo 
schools  by  another  missionary,  Wessmann,  The  Bawenda,  pp.  60  et  seq.) . 

The  initiation  of  girls  in  Azimba  Land,  Central  Africa,  has  been 
fully  and  interestingly  described  by  H.  Crawford  Angus  ("The  'Chen- 
samwali'  or  Initiation  Ceremony  of  Girls,"  Zeitschrift  fiir  Ethnologie, 
1898,  Heft  6).  At  the  first  sign  of  menstruation  the  girl  is  taken  by 
her  mother  out  of  the  village  to  a  grass  hut  prepared  for  her  where 
only  the  women  are  allowed  to  visit  her.  At  the  end  of  menstruation 
she  is  taken  to  a  secluded  spot  and  the  women  dance  round  her,  no  men 
being  present.  It  was  only  with  much  difficulty  that  Angus  was  en- 
abled to  witness  the  ceremony.  The  girl  is  then  informed  in  regard  to 
the  hygiene  of  menstruation.  "Many  songs  about  the  relations  between 
men  and  women  are  sung,  and  the  girl  is  instructed  as  to  all  her  duties 
when  she  becomes  a  wife.  .  .  .  The  girl  is  taught  to  be  faithful 
to  her  husband,  and  to  try  and  bear  children.  The  whole  matter  is 
looked  upon  as  a  matter  of  course,  and  not  as  a  thing  to  be  ashamed 
of  or  to  hide,  and  being  thus  openly  treated  of  and  no  secrecy  made 
about  it,  you  find  in  this  tribe  that  the  women  are  very  virtuous, 
because  the  subject  of  married  life  has  no  glamour  for  them.  When  a 
woman  is  pregnant  she  is  again  danced;  this  time  all  the  dancers  are 
naked,  and  she  is  taught  how  to  behave  and  what  to  do  when  the  time 
of  her  delivery  arrives." 

Among  the  Yuman  Indians  of  California,  as  described  by  Horatio 
Rust  ("A  Puberty  Ceremony  of  the  Mission  Indians,"  American  Anthro- 
pologist, Jan.  to  March,  1906,  p.  28)  the  girls  are  at  puberty  prepared 
for  marriage  by  a  ceremony.  They  are  wrapped  in  blankets  and  placed 
in  a  warm  pit,  where  they  lie  looking  very  happy  as  they  peer  out 
through  their  covers.  For  four  days  and  nights  they  lie  here  (occasion- 
ally going  away  for  food ) ,  while  the  old  women  of  the  tribe  dance  and 


SEXUAL    EDUCATION.  89 

sing  round  the  pit  constantly.  At  times  the  old  women  throw  silver 
coins  among  the  crowd  to  teach  the  girls  to  be  generous.  They  also 
give  away  cloth  and  wheat,  to  teach  them  to  be  kind  to  the  old  and 
needy;  and  they  sow  wild  seeds  broadcast  over  the  girls  to  cause  them 
to  be  prolific.  Finally,  all  strangers  are  ordered  away,  garlands  are 
placed  on  the  girls'  heads,  and  they  are  led  to  a  hillside  and  shown  the 
large  and  sacred  stone,  symbolical  of  the  female  organs  of  generation 
and  resembling  them,  which  is  said  to  protect  women.  Then  grain  is 
thrown  over  all  present,  and  the  ceremony  is  over. 

The  Thlinkeet  Eskimo  women  were  long  noted  for  their  fine 
qualities.  At  puberty  they  were  secluded,  sometimes  for  a  whole  year, 
being  kept  in  darkness,  suffering,  and  filth.  Yet  defective  and  unsatis- 
factory as  this  initiation  was,  "Langsdorf  suggests,"  says  Bancroft 
(Native  Races  of  Pacific,  vol.  i,  p.  110),  referring  to  the  virtues  of  the 
Thlinkeet  woman,  "that  it  may  be  during  this  period  of  confinement  that 
the  foundation  of  her  influence  is  laid;  that  in  modest  reserve  and 
meditation  her  character  is  strengthened,  and  she  comes  forth  cleansed 
in  mind  as  well  as  body." 

We  have  lost  these  ancient  and  invaluable  rites  of  initiation 
into  manhood  and  womanhood,  with  their  inestimable  moral 
benefits;  at  the  most  we  have  merely  preserved  the  shells  of 
initiation  in  which  the  core  has  decayed.  In  time,  we  cannot 
doubt,  they  will  be  revived  in  modern  forms.  At  present  the 
spiritual  initiation  of  youths  and  maidens  is  left  to  the  chances 
of  some  happy  accident,  and  usually  it  is  of  a  purely  cerebral 
character  which  cannot  be  perfectly  wholesome,  and  is  at  the 
best  absurdly  incomplete. 

This  cerebral  initiation  commonly  occurs  to  the  youth 
through  the  medium  of  literature.  The  influence  of  literature 
in  sexual  education  thus  extends,  in  an  incalculable  degree, 
beyond  the  narrow  sphere  of  manuals  on  sexual  hygiene,  however 
admirable  and  desirable  these  may  be.  The  greater  part  of 
literature  is  more  or  less  distinctly  penetrated  by  erotic  and  auto- 
erotic  conceptions  and  impulses ;  nearly  all  imaginative  literature 
proceeds  from  the  root  of  sex  to  flower  in  visions  of  beauty  and 
ecstasy.  The  Divine  Comedy  of  Dante  is  herein  the  immortal 
type  of  the  poet's  evolution.  The  youth  becomes  acquainted 
with  the  imaginative  representations  of  love  before  he  becomes 
acquainted  with  the  reality  of  love,  so  that,  as  Leo  Berg  puts  it, 


90  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

"the  way  to  love  among  civilized  peoples  passes  through  imagina- 
tion." All  literature  is  thus,  to  the  adolescent  soul,  a  part  of 
sexual  education.1  It  depends,  to  some  extent,  though  for- 
tunately not  entirety,  on  the  judgment  of  those  in  authority  over 
the  young  soul  whether  the  literature  to  which  the  youth  or  girl 
is  admitted  is  or  is  not  of  the  large  and  humanizing  order. 

All  great  literature  touches  nakedly  and  sanely  on  the  central  facts 
of  sex.  It  is  always  consoling  to  remember  this  in  an  age  of  petty 
pruderies.  And  it  is  a  satisfaction  to  know  that  it  would  not  be  pos- 
sible to  emasculate  the  literature  of  the  great  ages,  however  desirable 
it  might  seem  to  the  men  of  more  degenerate  ages,  or  to  close  the  ave- 
nues to  that  literature  against  the  young.  All  our  religious  and  literary 
traditions  serve  to  fortify  the  position  of  the  Bible  and  of  Shakespeare. 
"So  many  men  and  women,"  writes  a  correspondent,  a  literary  man, 
"gain  sexual  ideas  in  childhood  from  reading  the  Old  Testament,  that 
the  Bible  may  be  called  an  erotic  text-book.  Most  persons  of  either  sex 
with  whom  I  have  conversed  on  the  subject,  say  that  the  Books  of  Moses, 
and  the  stories  of  Amnon  and  Tamar,  Lot  and  his  daughters,  Potiphar's 
wife  and  Joseph,  etc.,  caused  speculation  and  curiosity,  and  gave  them 
information  of  the  sexual  relationship.  A  boy  and  girl  of  fifteen,  both 
friends  of  the  writer,  and  now  over  thirty  years  of  age,  used  to  find  out 
erotic  passages  in  the  Bible  on  Sunday  mornings,  while  in  a  Dissenting 
chapel,  and  pass  their  Bibles  to  one  another,  with  their  fingers  on  the 
portions  that  interested  them."  In  the  same  way  many  a  young  woman 
has  borrowed  Shakespeare  in  order  to  read  the  glowing  erotic  poetiy  of 
Venus  and  Adonis,  which  her  friends  have  told  her  about. 

The  Bible,  it  may  be  remarked,  is  not  in  every  respect,  a  model 
introduction  for  the  young  mind  to  the  questions  of  sex.  But  even 
its  frank  acceptance,  as  of  divine  origin,  of  sexual  rules  so  unlike  those 
that  are  nominally  our  own,  such  as  polygamy  and  concubinage,  helps 
to  enlarge  the  vision  of  the  youthful  mind  by  showing  that  the  rules 
surrounding  the  child  are  not  those  everywhere  and  always  valid,  while 
the  nakedness  and  realism  of  the  Bible  cannot  but  be  a  wholesome  and 
tonic  corrective  to  conventional  pruderies. 

We  must,   indeed,    always   protest  against   the   absurd   confusion 


i  The  intimate  relation  of  art  and  poetiy  to  the  sexual  impulse 
has  been  realized  in  a  fragmentary  way  by  many  who  have  not  attained 
to  any  wide  vision  of  auto-erotic  activity  in  life.  "Poetry  is  necessarily 
related  to  the  sexual  function,"  says  Metchnikoff  (Essois  Optimistes,  p. 
352),  who  also  quotes  with  approval  the  statement  of  Mobius  (pre- 
viously made  by  Ferrero  and  many  others)  that  "artistic  aptitudes  must 
probably  be  considered  as  secondary  sexual  characters." 


SEXUAL    EDUCATION.  91 

whereby  nakedness  of  speech  is  regarded  as  equivalent  to  immorality, 
and  not  the  less  because  it  is  often  adopted  even  in  what  are  regarded 
as  intellectual  quarters.  When  in  the  House  of  Lords,  in  the  last  cen- 
tury, the  question  of  the  exclusion  of  Byron's  statue  from  Westminster 
Abbey  was  under  discussion.  Lord  Brougham  "denied  that  Shakespeare 
was  more  moral  than  Byron.  He  could,  on  the  contrary,  point  out  in  a 
single  page  of  Shakespeare  more  grossness  than  was  to  be  found  in  all 
Lord  Byron's  works."  The  conclusion  Brougham  thus  reached,  that 
Byron  is  an  incomparably  more  moral  writer  than  Shakespeare,  o 
to  have  been  a  sufficient  reductio  ad  absurd-am  of  his  argument,  but  it 
does  not  appear  that  anyone  pointed  out  the  vulgar  confusion  into 
which  he  had  fallen. 

It  may  be  said  that  the  special  attractiveness  which  the  nakedness 
of  great  literature  sometimes  possesses  for  young  minds  is  unwholesome. 
But  it  must  be  remembered  that  the  peculiar  interest  of  this  element  is 
merely  due  to  the  fact  that  elsewhere  there  is  an  inveterate  and  abnor- 
mal concealment.  It  must  also  be  said  that  the  statements  of  the  great 
writers  about  natural  things  are  never  degrading,  nor  even  erotically 
exciting  to  the  young,  and  what  Emilia  Pardo  Bazan  tells  of  herself  and 
her  delight  when  a  child  in  the  historical  books  of  the  Old  Testament, 
that  the  crude  passages  in  them  failed  to  send  the  faintest  cloud  of 
trouble  across  her  young  imagination,  is  equally  true  of  most  children. 
It  is  necessary,  indeed,  that  these  naked  and  serious  things  should  be 
left  standing,  even  if  only  to  counterbalance  the  lewdly  comic  efforts  to 
besmirch  love  and  sex,  which  are  visible  to  all  in  every  low-class  book- 
seller's shop  window. 

This  point  of  view  was  vigorously  championed  by  the  speakers  on 
sexual  education  at  the  Third  Congress  of  the  German  Gesellschaft  zur 
Bekampfung  der  GesehleehtskTankheiten  in  1907.  Thus  Enderlin,  speak- 
ing as  a  headmaster,  protested  against  the  custom  of  bowdlerizing  poems 
and  folk-songs  for  the  use  of  children,  and  thus  robbing  them  of  the 
finest  introduction  to  purified  sexual  impulses  and  the  highest  sphere  of 
emotion,  while  at  the  same  time  they  are  recklessly  exposed  to  the 
"psychic  infection"  of  the  vulgar  comic  papers  everywhere  exposed  for 
sale.  "So  long  as  children  are  too  young  to  respond  to  erotic  poetry  it 
cannot  hurt  them;  when  they  are  old  enough  to  respond  it  can  only 
benefit  them  by  opening  to  them  the  highest  and  purest  channels  of 
human  emotion"  ( Sexual padagog:!:.  p.  60).  Professor  Sehafenacker 
(id.,  p.  98)  expresses  himself  in  the  same  sense,  and  remarks  that  "the 
method  of  removing  from  school-books  all  those  passages  which,  in  the 
opinion  of  short-sighted  and  narrow-hearted  schoolmasters,  are  unsuited 
for  youth,  must  be  decisively  condemned."  Every  healthy  boy  and  girl 
who  has  reached  the  age  of  puberty  may  be  safely  allowed  to  ramble  in 
any  good  library,  however  varied  its   contents.     So  far   from  needing 


92  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

guidance  they  will  usually  show  a  much  more  refined  taste  than  their 
elders.  At  this  age,  when  the  emotions  are  still  virginal  and  sensitive, 
the  things  that  are  realistic,  ugly,  or  morbid,  jar  on  the  young  spirit 
and  are  cast  aside,  though  in  adult  life,  with  the  coarsening  of  mental 
texture  which  comes  of  years  and  experience,  this  repugnance,  doubtless 
by  an  equally  sound  and  natural  instinct,  may  become  much  less  acute. 
Ellen  Key  in  Ch.  VI  of  her  Century  of  the  Child  well  summarizes 
the  reasons  against  the  practice  of  selecting  for  children  books  that  are 
"suitable"  for  them,  a  practice  which  she  considers  one  of  the  follies  of 
modern  education.  The  child  should  be  free  to  read  all  great  literature, 
and  will  himself  instinctively  put  aside  the  things  he  is  not  yet  ripe 
for.  His  cooler  senses  are  undisturbed  by  scenes  that  his  elders  find  too 
exciting,  while  even  at  a  later  stage  it  is  not  the  nakedness  of  great 
literature,  but  much  more  the  method  of  the  modern  novel,  which  is 
likely  to  stain  the  imagination,  falsify  reality  and  injure  taste.  It  is 
concealment  which  misleads  and  coarsens,  producing  a  state  of  mind  in 
which  even  the  Bible  becomes  a  stimulus  to  the  senses.  The  writings 
of  the  great  masters  yield  the  imaginative  food  which  the  child  craves, 
and  the  erotic  moment  in  them  is  too  brief  to  be  overheating.  It  is  the 
more  necessary,  Ellen  Key  remarks,  for  children  to  be  introduced  to 
great  literature,  since  they  often  have  little  opportunity  to  occupy  them- 
selves with  it  in  later  life.  Many  years  earlier  Ruskin,  in  Sesame  and 
Lilies,  had  eloquently  urged  that  even  young  girls  should  be  allowed  to 
range  freely  in  libraries. 

What  has  been  said  about  literature  applies  equally  to  art. 
Art,  as  well  as  literature,  and  in  the  same  indirect  way,  can  be 
made  a  valuable  aid  in  the  task  of  sexual  enlightenment  and 
sexual  Irygiene.  Modern  art  may,  indeed,  for  the  most  part,  be 
ignored  from  this  point  of  view,  but  children  cannot  be  too 
early  familiarized  with  the  representations  of  the  nude  in  ancient 
sculpture  and  in  the  paintings  of  the  old  masters  of  the  Italian 
school.  In  this  way  they  may  be  immunized,  as  Enderlin 
expresses  it,  against  those  representations  of  the  nude  which 
make  an  appeal  to  the  baser  instincts.  Early  familiarity  with 
nudity  in  art  is  at  the  same  time  an  aid  to  the  attainment  of  a 
proper  attitude  towards  purity  in  nature.  "He  who  has  once 
learnt,"  as  Holler  remarks,  "to  enjoy  peacefully  nakedness  in 
art,  will  be  able  to  look  on  nakedness  in  nature  as  on  a  work  of 
art." 


SEXUAL     EDUCATION.  93 

Casts  of  classic  nude  statues  and  reproductions  of  the  pictures  of 
the  old  Venetian  and  other  Italian  masters  may  fittingly  be  used  to 
adorn  schoolrooms,  not  so  much  as  objects  of  instruction  as  things  of 
beauty  with  which  the  child  cannot  too  early  become  familiarized.  In 
Italy  it  is  said  to  be  usual  for  school  classes  to  be  taken  by  their 
teachers  to  the  art  museums  with  good  results;  such  visits  form  part 
of  the  official  scheme  of  education. 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  such  early  familiarity  with  the  beauty 
of  nudity  in  classic  art  is  widely  needed  among  all  social  classes  and  in 
many  countries.  It  is  to  this  defect  of  our  education  that  we  must 
attribute  the  occasional,  and  indeed  in  America  and  England  frequent, 
occurrence  of  such  incidents  as  petitions  and  protests  against  the 
exhibition  of  nude  statuary  in  art  museums,  the  display  of  pictures  so 
inoffensive  as  Leighton's  "Bath  of  Psyche"  in  shop  windows,  and  the 
demand  for  the  draping  of  the  naked  personifications  of  abstract  virtues 
in  architectural  street  decoration.  So  imperfect  is  still  the  education  of 
the  multitude  that  in  these  matters  the  ill-bred  fanatic  of  pruriency 
usually  gains  his  will.  Such  a  state  of  things  cannot  but  have  an 
unwholesome  reaction  on  the  moral  atmosphere  of  the  community  in 
which  it  is  possible.  Even  from  the  religious  point  of  view,  prurient 
prudery  is  not  justifiable.  Northcote  has  very  temperately  and  sensibly 
discussed  the  question  of  the  nude  in  art  from  the  standpoint  of  Chris- 
tian morality.  He  points  out  that  not  only  is  the  nude  in  art  not  to 
be  condemned  without  qualification,  and  that  the  nude  is  by  no  means 
necessarily  the  erotic,  but  he  also  adds  that  even  erotic  art,  in  its  best 
and  purest  manifestations,  only  arouses  emotions  that  are  the  legitimate 
object  of  man's  aspirations.  It  would  be  impossible  even  to  represent 
Biblical  stories  adequately  on  canvas  or  in  marble  if  erotic  art  were  to 
be  tabooed  (Rev.  H.  Northcote,  Christianity  and  Sex  Problems,  Ch.  XIV) . 

Early  familiarity  with  the  nude  in  classic  and  early  Italian  art 
should  be  combined  at  puberty  with  an  equal  familiarity  with  photo- 
graphs of  beautiful  and  naturally  developed  nude  models.  In  former 
years  books  containing  such  pictures  in  a  suitable  and  attractive  man- 
ner to  place  before  the  young  were  difficult  to  procure.  Now  this  diffi- 
culty ncj  longer  exists.  Dr.  C.  H.  Stratz,  of  The  Hague,  has  been  the 
pioneer  in  this  matter,  and  in  a  series  of  beautiful  books  (notably  in 
Der  Korper  des>Kindes,  Die  Schonheit  des  Weiblichen  Korpers  and  Die 
Rassenscfionheit  des  Weibes,  all  published  by  Enke  in  Stuttgart),  he 
has  brought  together  a  large  number  of  admirably  selected  photographs 
of  nude  but  entirely  chaste  figures.  More  recently  Dr.  Shufeldt,  of  Wash- 
ington (who  dedicates  his  work  to  Stratz),  has  published  his  Studies 
of  the  Human  Form  in  which,  in  the  same  spirit,  he  has  brought 
together  the  results  of  his  own  studies  of  the  naked  human  form  during 
many  years.     It  is  necessary  to  correct  the  impressions  received  from 


94  PSYCHOLOGY    OP    SEX. 

classic  sources  by  good  photographic  illustrations  on  account  of  the  false 
conventions  prevailing  in  classic  works,  though  those  conventions  were 
not  necessarily  false  for  the  artists  who  originated  them.  The  omission 
of  the  pudendal  hair,  in  representations  of  the  nude  was,  for  instance, 
quite  natm-al  for  the  people  of  countries  still  under  Oriental  influence 
are  accustomed  to  remove  the  hair  from  the  body.  If,  however,  under 
quite  different  conditions,  we  perpetuate  that  artistic  convention  to-day, 
we  put  ourselves  into  a  perverse  relation  to  nature.  There  is  ample 
evidence  of  this.  "There  is  one  convention  so  ancient,  so  necessary,  so 
universal,"  writes  Mr.  Frederic  Harrison  (Nineteenth  Century  and 
After,  Aug.,  1907),  "that  its  deliberate  defiance  to-day  may  arouse  the 
bile  of  the  least  squeamish  of  men  and  should  make  women  withdraw  at 
once."  If  boys  and  girls  were  brought  up  at  their  mother's  knees  in 
familiarity  with  pictures  of  beautiful  and  natural  nakedness,  it  would 
be  impossible  for  anyone  to  write  such  silly  and  shameful  words  as 
these. 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  among  ourselves  the  simple  and  direct 
attitude  of  the  child  towards  nakedness  is  so  early  crushed  out  of  him 
that  intelligent  education  is  necessary  in  order  that  he  may  be  enabled 
to  discern  what  is  and  what  is  not  obscene.  To  the  plough-boy  and  the 
country  servant-girl  all  nakedness,  including  that  of  Greek  statuary,  is 
alike  shameful  or  lustful.  "I  have  a  picture  of  women  like  that,"  said 
a  countryman  with  a  grin,  as  he  pointed  to  a  photograph  of  one  of 
Tintoret's  most  beautiful  groups,  "smoking  cigarettes."  And  tbe  mass 
of  people  in  most  northern  countries  have  still  passed  little  beyond  this 
stage  of  discernment;  in  ability  to  distinguish  between  the  beautiful 
and  the  obscene  they  are  still  on  the  level  of  the  plough-boy  and  the 
servant-girl. 


CHAPTEE  III. 

SEXUAL  EDUCATION  AND  NAKEDNESS. 

The  Greek  Attitude  Towards  Nakedness — How  the  Romans  Modi- 
fied That  Attitude — The  Influence  of  Christianity — Nakedness  in  Mediae- 
val Times — Evolution  of  the  Horror  of  Nakedness — Concomitant  Change 
in  the  Conception  of  Nakedness — Prudery — The  Romantic  Movement — 
Rise  of  a  New  Feeling  in  Regard  to  Nakedness — The  Hygienic  Aspect 
of  Nakedness — How  Children  May  Be  Accustomed  to  Nakedness — Naked- 
ness Not  Inimical  to  Modesty — The  Instinct  of  Physical  Pride — The 
Value  of  Nakedness  in  Education — The  iEsthetic  Value  of  Nakedness — 
The  Human  Body  as  One  of  the  Prime  Tonics  of  Life — How  Nakedness 
May  Be  Cultivated — The  Moral  Value  of  Nakedness. 

The  discussion  of  the  value  of  nakedness  in  art  leads  us  on 
to  the  allied  question  of  nakedness  in  nature.  What  is  the 
psychological  influence  of  familiarity  with  nakedness  ?  How  far 
should  children  be  made  familiar  with  the  naked  body  ?  This  is 
a  question  in  regard  to  which  different  opinions  have  been  held  in 
different  ages,  and  during  recent  years  a  remarkable  change  has 
begun  to  come  over  the  minds  of  practical  educationalists  in 
regard  to  it. 

In  Sparta,  in  Chios,  and  elsewhere  in  Greece,  women  at  one 
time  practiced  gymnastic  feats  and  dances  in  nakedness,  together 
with  the  men,  or  in  their  presence.1  Plato  in  his  Republic 
approved  of  such  customs  and  said  that  the  ridicule  of  those  who 
laughed  at  them  was  but  "unripe  fruit  plucked  from  the  tree  of 
knowledge."  On  many  questions  Plato's  opinions  changed,  but 
not  on  this.  In  the  Laws,  which  are  the  last  outcome  of  his 
philosophic  reflection  in  old  age,  he  still  advocates  (Bk.  viii)  a 
similar  coeducation  of  the  sexes  and  their  cooperation  in  all  the 
works  of  life,  in  part  with  a  view  to  blunt  the  over-keen  edge  of 

iThus  Athenseus  (Bk.  xiii,  Ch.  XX)  says:  "In  the  Island  of 
Chios  it  is  a  beautiful  sight  to  go  to  the  gymnasia  and  the  race-courses, 
and  to  see  the  young  men  wrestling  naked  with  the  maidens  who  are 
also  naked." 

(95) 


96  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

sexual  appetite;  with  the  same  object  lie  advocated  the  associa- 
tion together  of  youths  and  girls  without  constraint  in  costumes 
which  offered  no  concealment  to  the  form. 

It  is  noteworthy  that  the  Eomans,  a  coarser-grained  people 
than  the  Greeks  and  in  our  narrow  modern  sense  more  "moral/' 
showed  no  perception  of  the  moralizing  and  refining  influence  of 
nakedness.  Nudity  to  them  was  merely  a  licentious  indulgence, 
to  be  treated  with  contempt  even  when  it  was  enjoyed.  It  was 
confined  to  the  stage,  and  clamored  for  by  the  populace.  In  the 
Floralia,  especially,  the  crowd  seem  to  have  claimed  it  as  their 
right  that  the  actors  should  play  naked,  probably,  it  has  been 
thought,  as  a  survival  of  a  folk-ritual.  But  the  Eomans,  though 
they  were  eager  to  run  to  the  theatre,  felt  nothing  but  disdain 
for  the  performers.  "Flagitii  principium  est,  nudare  inter  cives 
corpora/'  So  thought  old  Ennius,  as  reported  by  Cicero,  and 
that  remained  the  genuine  Eoman  feeling  to  the  last.  "Quanta 
perversitas  !"  as  Tertullian  exclaimed.  "Artem  magniflcant, 
artificem  notant."1  In  this  matter  the  Eomans,  although  they 
aroused  the  horror  of  the  Christians,  were  yet  in  reality  laying 
the  foundation  of  Christian  morality. 

Christianity,  which  found  so  many  of  Plato's  opinions  con- 
genial, would  have  nothing  to  do  with  his  view  of  nakedness  and 
failed  to  recognize  its  psychological  correctness.  The  reason  was 
simple,  and  indeed  simple-minded.  The  Church  was  passion- 
ately eager  to  fight  against  what  it  called  "the  flesh,"  and  thus 
fell  into  the  error  of  confusing  the  subjective  question  of  sexual 
desire  with  the  objective  spectacle  of  the  naked  form.  "The 
flesh"  is  evil;  therefore,  "the  flesh"  must  be  hidden.  And  they 
hid  it,  without  understanding  that  in  so  doing  they  had  not  sup- 
pressed the  craving  for  the  human  form,  but,  on  the  contrary, 
had  heightened  it  by  imparting  to  it  the  additional  fascination 
of  a  forbidden  mystery. 

Burton,  in  his  Anatomy  of  Melancholy  (Part  III,  Sect  II,  Mem.  II, 
Subs.  IV),  referring  to  the  recommendations  of  Plato,  adds:  "But 
Euseoius  and  Theodoret  worthily  lash  him  for  it;    and  well  they  might: 

1  Augustine  {De  civitate  Dei,  lib.  ii,  cap.  XIII)  refers  to  the  same 
point,  contrasting  the  Romans  with  the  Greeks  who  honored  their  actors. 


SEXUAL   EDUCATION   AND    NAKEDNESS.  97 

for  as  one  saith,  the  very  sight  of  naked  parts,  causeth  enormous, 
exceeding  concupiscences,  and  stirs  up  both  men  and  women  to  burning 
lust."  Yet,  as  Burton  himself  adds  further  on  in  the  same  section  of 
his  work  (Mem.  V,  Subs.  Ill),  without  protest,  "some  are  of  opinion, 
that  to  see  a  woman  naked,  is  able  of  itself  to  alter  his  affection;  and 
it  is  worthy  of  consideration,  saith  Montaigne,  the  Frenchman,  in  his 
Essays,  that  the  skilfullest  masters  of  amorous  dalliance  appoint  for  a 
remedy  of  venereous  passions,  a  full  survey  of  the  body." 

There  ought  to  be  no  question  regarding  the  fact  that  it  is  the 
adorned,  the  partially  concealed  body,  and  not  the  absolutely  naked 
body,  which  acts  as  a  sexual  excitant.  I  have  brought  together  some 
evidence  on  this  point  in  the  study  of  "The  Evolution  of  Modesty."  "In 
Madagascar,  West  Africa,  and  the  Cape,"  says  G-.  F.  Scott  Elliot  (A 
'Naturalist  in  Mid-Africa,  p.  36),  "I  have  always  found  the  same  rule. 
Chastity  varies  inversely  as  the  amount  of  clothing."  It  is  now  indeed 
generally  held  that  one  of  the  chief  primary  objects  of  ornament  and 
clothing  was  the  stimulation  of  sexual  desire,  and  artists'  models 
are  well  aware  that  when  tbey  are  completely  unclothed,  they  are  most 
safe  from  undesired  masculine  advances.  "A  favorite  model  of  mine 
told  me,"  remarks  Dr.  Shufeldt  (Medical  Brief,  Oct.,  1904),  the  distin- 
guished author  of  Studies  of  the  Human  Form,  "that  it  was  her  prac- 
tice to  disrobe  as  soon  after  entering  the  artist's  studio  as  possible,  for, 
as  men  are  not  always  responsible  for  their  emotions,  she  felt  that  she 
was  far  less  likely  to  arouse  or  excite  them  when  entirely  nude  than 
when  only  semi-draped."  This  fact  is,  indeed,  quite  familiar  to  artists' 
models.  If  the  conquest  of  sexual  desire  were  the  first  and  last  consid- 
eration of  life  it  would  be  more  reasonable  to  prohibit  clothing  than  to 
prohibit  nakedness. 

When  Christianity  absorbed  the  whole  of  the  European  world 
this  strict  avoidance  of  even  the  sight  of  "the  flesh/'  although 
nominally  accepted  by  all  as  the  desirable  ideal,  could  only  be 
carried  out,  thoroughly  and  completely,  in  the  cloister.  In  the 
practice  of  the  world  outside,  although  the  original  Christian 
ideals  remained  influential,  various  pagan  and  primitive  tradi- 
tions in  favor  of  nakedness  still  persisted,  and  were,  to  some 
extent,  allowed  to  manifest  themselves,  alike  in  ordinary  custom 
and  on  special  occasions. 

How  widespread  is  the  occasional  or  habitual  practice  of  nakedness 
in  the  world  generally,  and  how  entirely  concordant  it  is  with  even  a 
most  sensitive  modesty,  has  been  set  forth  in  "The  Evolution  of  Mod- 
esty," in  vol.  i  of  these  Studies. 

7 


98  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

Even  during  the  Christian  era  the  impulse  to  adopt  nudity,  often 
with  the  feeling  that  it  was  an  especially  sacred  practice,  has  persisted. 
The  Adamites  of  the  second  century,  who  read  and  prayed  naked,  and 
celebrated  the  sacrament  naked,  according  to  the  statement  quoted  by 
St.  Augustine,  seem  to  have  caused  little  scandal  so  long  as  they  only 
practiced  nudity  in  their  sacred  ceremonies.  The  German  Brethren  of 
the  Free  Spirit,  in  the  thirteenth  century,  combined  so  much  chastity 
with  promiscuous  nakedness  that  orthodox  Catholics  believed  they  were 
assisted  by  the  Devil.  The  French  Pieards,  at  a  much  later  date, 
insisted  on  public  nakedness,  believing  that  God  had  sent  their  leader 
into  the  world  as  a  new  Adam  to  reestablish  the  law  of  Nature ;  they 
were  persecuted  and  were  finally  exterminated  by  the  Hussites. 

In  daily  life,  however,  a  considerable  degree  of  nakedness  was 
tolerated  during  mediaeval  times.  This  was  notably  so  in  the  public 
baths,  frequented  by  men  and  women  together.  Thus  Alwin  Schultz 
remarks  (in  his  Hofische  Leoen  sur  Zeit  der  Minnesanger) ,  that  the 
women  of  the  aristocratic  classes,  though  not  the  men,  were  often  naked 
in  these  baths  except  for  a  hat  and  a  necklace. 

It  is  sometimes  stated  that  in  the  mediaeval  religious  plays  Adam 
and  Eve  were  absolutely  naked.  Chambers  doubts  this,  and  thinks  they 
wore  flesh-colored  tights,  or  were,  as  in  a  later  play  of  this  kind, 
"apparelled  in  white  leather"  (E.  K.  Chambers,  The  Mediaeval  Stage. 
vol.  i,  p.  5 ) .  It  may  be  so,  but  the  public  exposure  even  of  the  sexual 
organs  was  permitted,  and  that  in  aristocratic  houses,  for  John  of  Salis- 
bury (in  a  passage  quoted  by  Buckle,  Commonplace  Book,  541)  protests 
against  this  custom. 

The  women  of  the  feminist  sixteenth  century  in  France,  as  R.  de 
Maulde  la  Claviere  remarks  {Revue  de  VArt,  Jan.,  1898),  had  no  scruple 
in  recompensing  their  adorers  by  admitting  them  to  their  toilette,  or 
even  their  bath.  Late  in  the  century  they  became  still  less  prudish,  and 
many  well-known  ladies  allowed  themselves  to  be  painted  naked  down  to 
the  waist,  as  we  see  in  the  portrait  of  "Gabrielle  d'Estrges  au  Bain"  at 
Chantilly.  Many  of  these  pictures,  however,  are  certainly  not  real 
portraits. 

Even  in  the  middle  of  the  seventeenth  century  in  England  naked- 
ness was  not  prohibited  in  public,  for  Pepys  tells  us  that  on  July  29, 
1667,  a  Quaker  came  into  Westminster  Hall,  crying,  "Repent!  Repent!" 
being  in  a  state  of  nakedness,  except  that  he  was  "very  civilly  tied 
about  the  privities  to  avoid  scandal."  (This  was  doubtless  Solomon 
Eccles,  who  was  accustomed  to  go  about  in  this  costume,  both  before  and 
after  the  Restoration.  He  had  been  a  distinguished  musician,  and, 
though  eccentric,  was  apparently  not  insane.) 

In  a  chapter,  "De  la  Nudite,"  and  in  the  appendices  of  his  book, 
De  V Amour  (vol.  i,  p.  221),  Senancour  gives  instances  of  the  occasional 


SEXUAL   EDUCATION   AND   NAKEDNESS.  99 

practice  of  nudity  in  Europe,  and  adds  some  interesting  remarks  of  his 
own;  so,  also,  Dulaure  (Des  Divinitc  Generatricsi,  Ch.  XV).  It  would 
appear,  as  a  rule,  that  though  complete  nudity  was  allowed  in  other 
respects,  it  was  usual  to  cover  the  sexual  parts. 

The  movement  of  revolt  against  nakedness  never  became 
completely  victorious  until  the  nineteenth  century.  That  cen- 
tury represented  the  triumph  of  all  the  forces  that  banned  public 
nakedness  everywhere  and  altogether.  If,  as  Pudor  insists, 
nakedness  is  aristocratic  and  the  slavery  of  clothes  a  plebeian 
characteristic  imposed  on  the  lower  classes  by  an  upper  class  who 
reserved  to  themselves  the  privilege  of  physical  culture,  we  may 
perhaps  connect  this  with  the  outburst  of  democratic  plebeianism 
which,  as  Nietzsche  pointed  out,  reached  its  climax  in  the  nine- 
teenth century.  It  is  in  any  case  certainly  interesting  to  observe 
that  by  this  time  the  movement  had  entirely  changed  its  char- 
acter. It  had  become  general,  but  at  the  same  time  its  founda- 
tion had  been  undermined.  It  had  largely  lost  its  religious  and 
moral  character,  and  instead  was  regarded  as  a  matter  of  con- 
vention. The  nineteenth  century  man  who  encountered  the 
spectacle  of  white  limbs  flashing  in  the  sunlight  no  longer  felt 
like  the  mediaeval  ascetic  that  he  was  risking  the  salvation  of  his 
immortal  soul  or  even  courting  the  depravation  of  his  morals ;  he 
merely  felt  that  it  was  "indecent"  or,  in  extreme  cases,  "disgust- 
ing." That  is  to  say  he  regarded  the  matter  as  simply  a  question 
of  conventional  etiquette,  at  the  worst,  of  taste,  of  aesthetics.  In 
thus  bringing  down  his  repugnance  to  nakedness  to  so  low  a  plane 
he  had  indeed  rendered  it  generally  acceptable,  but  at  the  same 
time  he  had  deprived  it  of  high  sanction.  His  profound  horror 
of  nakedness  was  out  of  relation  to  the  frivolous  grounds  on  which 
he  based  it. 

We  must  not,  however,  under-rate  the  tenacity  with  which  this 
horror  of  nakedness  was  held.  Nothing  illustrates  more  vividly  the 
deeply  ingrained  hatred  which  the  nineteenth  century  felt  of  nakedness 
than  the  ferocity — there  is  no  other  word  for  it — with  which  Christian 
missionaries  to  savages  all  over  the  world,  even  in  the  tropics,  insisted 
on  their  converts  adopting  the  conventional  clothing  of  Northern  Europe. 
Travellers'  narratives  abound  in  references  to  the  emphasis  placed  by 


100  PSYCHOLOGY   OF    SEX. 

missionaries  on  this  change  of  custom,  which  was  both  injurious  to  the 
health  of  the  people  and  degrading  to  their  dignity.  It  is  sufficient  to 
quote  one  authoritative  witness,  Lord  Stanmore,  formerly  Governor  of 
Fiji,  who  read  a  long  paper  to  the  Anglican  Missionary  Conference  in 
1894  on  the  subject  of  "Undue  Introduction  of  Western  Ways."  "In 
the  centre  of  the  village,"  he  remarked  in  quoting  a  typical  case 
( and  referring  not  to  Fiji  but  to  Tonga ) ,  "is  the  church,  a  wooden 
barn-like  building.  If  the  day  be  Sunday,  we  shall  find  the  native 
minister  arrayed  in  a  greenish-black  swallow-tail  coat,  a  neckcloth, 
once  white,  and  a  pair  of  spectacles,  Avhich  he  probably  does  not 
need,  preaching  to  a  congregation,  the  male  portion  of  which  is  dressed 
in  much  the  same  manner  as  himself,  while  the  women  are  dizened 
out  in  old  battered  hats  or  bonnets,  and  shapeless  gowns  like  bathing 
dresses,  or  it  may  be  in  crinolines  of  an  early  type.  Chiefs  of  influ- 
ence and  women  of  high  birth,  who  in  their  native  dress  would  look, 
and  do  look,  the  ladies  and  gentlemen  they  are,  are,  by  their  Sunday 
finery,  given  the  appearance  of  attendants  upon  Jack-in-the-Green.  If 
a  visit  be  paid  to  the  houses  of  the  town,  after  the  morning's  work  of 
the  people  is  over,  the  family  will  be  found  sitting  on  chairs,  listless 
and  uncomfortable,  in  a  room  full  of  litter.  In  the  houses  of  the 
superior  native  clergy  there  will  be  a  yet  greater  aping  of  the  manners 
of  the  West.  There  will  be  chairs  covered  with  hideous  antimacassars, 
tasteless  round  worsted-work  mats  for  absent  flower  jars,  and  a  lot  of 
ugly  cheap  and  vulgar  china  chimney  ornaments,  which,  there  being  no 
fireplace,  and  consequently  no  chimney-piece,  are  set  out  in  order  on  a 
rickety  deal  table.  The  whole  life  of  these  village  folk  is  one  piece  of 
Tinreal  acting.  They  are  continually  asking  themselves  whether  they  are 
incurring  any  of  the  penalties  entailed  by  infraction  of  the  long  table 
of  prohibitions,  and  whether  they  are  living  up  to  the  foreign  garments 
they  wear.  Their  faces  have,  for  the  most  part,  an  expression  of  sullen 
discontent,  they  move  about  silently  and  joylessly,  rebels  in  heart  to  the 
restrictive  code  on  them,  but  which  they  fear  to  cast  off,  partly  from  a 
vague  apprehension  of  possible  secular  results,  and  partly  because  they 
suppose  they  will  cease  to  be  good  Christians  if  they  do  so.  They  have 
good  ground  for  their  dissatisfaction.  At  the  time  when  I  visited  the 
villages  I  have  specially  in  my  eye,  it  was  punishable  by  fine  and  impris- 
onment to  wear  native  clothing,  punishable  by  fine  and  imprisonment  to 
wear  long  hair  or  a  garland  of  flowers;  punishable  by  fine  or  imprison- 
ment to  wrestle  or  to  play  at  ball;  punishable  by  fine  and  imprison- 
ment to  build  a  native-fashioned  house;  punishable  not  to  wear  shirt 
and  trousers,  and  in  certain  localities  coat  and  shoes  also;  and,  in  addi- 
tion to  laws  enforcing  a  strictly  puritanical  observation  of  the  Sabbath, 
it  was  punishable  by  fine  and  imprisonment  to  bathe  on  Sundays.  In 
some  other  places  bathing  on  Sunday  was  punishable  by  flogging;    and 


SEXUAL  EDUCATION   AND   NAKEDNESS.  101 

to  my  knowledge  women  have  been  flogged  for  no  other  offense.  Men  in 
such  circumstances  are  ripe  for  revolt,  and  sometimes  the  revolt  comes." 
An  obvious  result  of  reducing  the  feeling  about  nakedness  to  an 
unreasoning  but  imperative  convention  is  the  tendency  to  prudishness. 
This,  as  we  know,  is  a  form  of  pseudo-modesty  which,  being  a  conven- 
tion, and  not  a  natural  feeling,  is  capable  of  unlimited  extension.  It  is 
by  no  means  confined  to  modern  times  or  to  Christian  Europe.  The 
ancient  Hebrews  were  not  entirely  free  from  prudishness,  and  we  find  in 
the  Old  Testament  that  by  a  curious  euphemism  the  sexual  organs  ara 
sometimes  referred  to  as  "the  feet."  The  Turks  are  capable  of  prudish- 
ness. So,  indeed,  were  even  the  ancient  Greeks.  "Dion  the  philosopher 
tells  us,"  remarks  Clement  of  Alexandria  (Stromates,  Bk.  IV,  Ch.  XIX) 
"that  a  certain  woman,  Lysidica,  through  excess  of  modesty,  bathed  in 
her  clothes,  and  that  Philotera,  when  she  was  to  enter  the  bath,  grad- 
ually drew  back  her  tunic  as  the  water  covered  her  naked  parts;  and 
then  rising  by  degrees,  put  it  on."  Mincing  prudes  were  found  among 
the  early  Christians,  and  their  ways  are  graphically  described  by  St. 
Jerome  in  one  of  his  letters  to  Eustochium:  "These  women,"  he  says, 
speak  between  their  teeth  or  with  the  edge  of  the  lips,  and  with  a  lisp- 
ing tongue,  only  half  pronouncing  their  words,  because  they  regard  as 
gross  whatever  is  natural.  Such  as  these,"  declares  Jerome,  the  scholar 
in  him  overcoming  the  ascetic,  "corrupt  even  language."  Whenever  a 
new  and  artificial  "modesty"  is  imposed  upon  savages  prudery  tends  to 
arise.  Haddon  describes  this  among  the  natives  of  Torres  Straits,  where 
even  the  children  now  suffer  from  exaggerated  prudishness,  though  for- 
merly absolutely  naked  and  unashamed  (Cambridge  Anthropological 
Expedition  to  Torres  Straits,  vol.  v,  p.  271). 

The  nineteenth  century,  which  witnessed  the  triumph  of 
timidity  and  prudery  in  this  matter,  also  produced  the  first 
fruitful  germ  of  new  conceptions  of  nakedness.  To  some 
extent  these  were  embodied  in  the  great  Eomantic  movement. 
Eousseau,  indeed,  had  placed  no  special  insistence  on  nakedness 
as  an  element  of  the  return  to  Nature  which  he  preached  so 
infhientially.  A  new  feeling  in  this  matter  emerged,  however, 
with  characteristic  extravagance,  in  some  of  the  episodes  of  the 
Revolution,  while  in  Germany  in  the  pioneering  Lucinde  of 
Friedrich  Schlegel,  a  characteristic  figure  in  the  Eomantic  move- 
ment, a  still  unfamiliar  conception  of  the  body  was  set  forth  in 
a  serious  and  earnest  spirit. 

In  England,  Blake  with  his  strange  and  flaming  genius, 


102  PSTCHOLOGT    OF    SEX. 

proclaimed  a  mystical  gospel  which  involved  the  spiritual 
glorification  of  the  body  and  contempt  for  the  civilized  worship 
of  clothes  ("As  to  a  modern  man,"  he  wrote,  "stripped  from  his 
load  of  clothing  he  is  like  a  dead  corpse")  ;  while,  later,  in 
America,  Thoreau  and  Whitman  and  Burroughs  asserted,  still 
more  definitely,  a  not  dissimilar  message  concerning  the  need  of 
returning  to  Nature. 

We  find  the  importance  of  the  sight  of  the  body — though  very  nar- 
rowly, for  the  avoidance  of  fraud  in  the  preliminaries  of  marriage — set 
forth  as  early  as  the  sixteenth  century  by  Sir  Thomas  More  in  his 
Utopia,  which  is  so  rich  in  new  and  fruitful  ideas.  In  Utopia,  accord- 
ing to  Sir  Thomas  More,  before  marriage,  a  staid  and  honest  matron 
"showeth  the  woman,  be  she  maid  or  widow,  naked  to  the  wooer.  And 
likewise  a  sage  and  discreet  man  exhibiteth  the  wooer  naked  to  the 
woman.  At  this  custom  we  laughed  and  disallowed  it  as  foolish.  But 
they,  on  their  part,  do  greatly  wonder  at  the  folly  of  all  other  nations 
which,  in  buying  a  colt  where  a  little  money  is  in  hazard,  be  so  chary 
and  circumspect  that  though  he  be  almost  all  bare,  yet  they  will  not 
buy  him  unless  the  saddle  and  all  the  harness  be  taken  off,  lest  under 
these  coverings  be  hid  some  gall  or  sore.  And  yet,  in  choosing  a  wife, 
which  shall  be  either  pleasure  or  displeasure  to  them  all  their  life  after, 
they  be  so  reckless  that  all  the  residue  of  the  woman's  body  being  cov- 
ered with  clothes,  they  estimate  her  scarcely  by  one  handsbreadth  (for 
they  can  see  no  more  but  her  face)  and  so  join  her  to  them,  not  without 
great  jeopardy  of  evil  agreeing  together,  if  anything  in  her  body  after- 
ward should  chance  to  offend  or  mislike  them.  Verily,  so  foul  deformity 
may  be  hid  under  these  coverings  that  it  may  quite  alienate  and  take 
away  the  man's  mind  from  his  wife,  when  it  shall  not  be  lawful  for 
their  bodies  to  be  separate  again.  If  such  deformity  happen  by  any 
chance  after  the  marriage  is  consummate  and  finished,  well,  there  is  no 
remedy  but  patience.  But  it  were  well  done  that  a  law  were  made 
whereby  all  such  deceits  were  eschewed  and  aA^oided  beforehand." 

The  clear  conception  of  what  may  be  called  the  spiritual  value  of 
nakedness — by  no  means  from  More's  point  of  view,  but  as  a  part  of 
natural  hygiene  in  the  widest  sense,  and  as  a  high  and  special  aspect 
of  the  purifying  and  ennobling  function  of  beauty — is  of  much  later 
date.  It  is  not  clearly  expressed  until  the  time  of  the  Romantic  move- 
ment at  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century.  We  have  it  admirably 
set  forth  in  Senancour's  Be  V 'Amour  (first  edition,  1806;  fourth  and 
enlarged  edition,  1834),  which  still  remains  one  of  the  best  books  on  the. 
moi-ality  of  love.  After  remarking  that  nakedness  by  no  means  abol- 
ishes modesty,  he  proceeds  to  advocate  occasional  partial  or  complete 


SEXUAL   EDUCATION    AND    NAKEDNESS.  103 

nudity.  "Let  us  suppose,"  he  remarks,  somewhat  in  the  spirit  of 
Plato,  "a  country  in  which  at  certain  general  festivals  the  women 
should  be  absolutely  free  to  be  nearly  or  even  quite  naked.  Swimming, 
Avaltzing,  walking,  those  who  thought  good  to  do  so  might  remain 
unclothed  in  the  presence  of  men.  No  doubt  the  illusions  of  love  would 
be  little  known,  and  passion  would  see  a  diminution  of  its  transports. 
But  is  it  passion  that  in  general  ennobles  human  affairs?  We  need 
honest  attachments  and  delicate  delights,  and  all  these  we  may  obtain 

while   still    preserving   our    common-sense Such   nakedness 

would  demand  corresponding  institutions,  strong  and  simple,  and  a  great 
respect  for  those  conventions  which  belong  to  all  times"  (Senancour,  De 
V Amour,  vol.  i,  p.  314). 

From  that  time  onwards  references  to  the  value  and  desirability 
of  nakedness  become  more  and  more  frequent  in  all  civilized  countries, 
sometimes  mingled  with  sarcastic  allusions  to  the  false  conventions  we 
have  inherited  in  this  matter.  Thus  Thoreau  writes  in  his  journal  on 
June  12,  1852,  as  he  looks  at  boys  bathing  in  the  river:  "The  color  oi 
their  bodies  in  the  sun  at  a  distance  is  pleasing.  I  hear  the  sound  of 
their  sport  borne  over  the  water.  As  yet  we  have  not  man  in  Nature. 
What  a  singular  fact  for  an  angel  visitant  to  this  earth  to  carry  back 
in  his  note-book,  that  men  were  forbidden  to  expose  their  bodies  under 
the  severest  penalties." 

Iwan  Bloch,  in  Chapter  VII  of  his  Sexual  Life  of  Our  Time,  dis- 
cusses this  question  of  nakedness  from  the  modern  point  of  view,  and 
concludes:  "A  natural  conception  of  nakedness:  that  is  the  watchword 
of  the  future.  All  the  hygienic,  aesthetic,  and  moral  efforts  of  our  time 
are  pointing  in  that  direction." 

Stratz,  as  befits  one  who  has  worked  so  strenuously  in  the  cause 
of  hitman  health  and  beauty,  admirably  sets  forth  the  stage  which  we 
have  now  attained  in  this  matter.  After  pointing  out  {Die  Frauen- 
kleidung,  third  edition,  1904,  p.  30)  that,  in  opposition  to  the  pagan 
world  which  worshipped  naked  gods,  Christianity  developed  the  idea 
that  nakedness  was  merely  sexual,  and  therefore  immoral,  he  proceeds : 
"But  over  all  glimmered  on  the  heavenly  heights  of  the  Cross,  the  naked 
body  of  the  Saviour.  Under  that  protection  there  has  gradually  disen- 
gaged itself  from  the  confusion  of  ideas  a  new  transfigured  form  of 
nakedness  made  free  after  long  struggle.  I  would  call  this  artistic 
nakedness,  for  as  it  was  immortalized  by  the  old  Greeks  through  art,  so 
also  among  us  it  has  been  awakened  to  new  life  by  art.  Artistic  naked- 
ness is,  in  its  nature,  much  higher  than  either  the  natural  or  the  sensual 
conception  of  nakedness.  The  simple  child  of  Nature  sees  in  nakedness 
nothing  at  all;  the  clothed  man  sees  in  the  uncovered  body  only  a  sen- 
sual irritation.  But  at  the  highest  standpoint  man  consciously  returns 
to  Nature,  and  recognizes  that  under  the  manifold  coverings  of  human 


104  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   SEX. 

fabrication  there  is  hidden  the  most  splendid  creature  that  God  has 
created.  One  may  stand  in  silent,  worshipping  wonder  before  the  sight; 
another  may  be  impelled  to  imitate  and  show  to  his  fellow-man  what, 
in  that  holy  moment  he  has  seen.  But  both  enjoy  the  spectacle  of 
human  beauty  with  full  consciousness  and  enlightened  purity  of 
thought." 

It  was  not,  however,  so  much  on  these  more  spiritual  sides, 
but  on  the  side  of  hygiene,  that  the  nineteenth  century  furnished 
its  chief  practical  contribution  to  the  new  attitude  towards 
nakedness. 

Lord  Monboddo,  the  Scotch  judge,  who  was  a  pioneer  in  regard  to 
many  modern  ideas,  had  already  in  the  eighteenth  century  realized  the 
hygienic  value  of  "air-baths,"  and  he  invented  that  now  familiar  name. 
"Lord  Monboddo,"  says  Boswell,  in  1777  (Life  of  Johnson,  edited  by 
Hill,  vol.  iii,  p.  168)  "told  me  that  he  awaked  every  morning  at  four, 
and  then  for  his  health  got  up  and  walked  in  his  room  naked,  with  the 
window  open,  which  he  called  taking  an  air-oath."  It  is  said  also,  I 
know  not  on  what  authority,  that  he  made  his  beautiful  daughters  take 
an  air-bath  naked  on  the  terrace  every  morning.  Another  distinguished 
man  of  the  same  century,  Benjamin  Franklin,  used  sometimes  to  work 
naked  in  his  study  on  hygienic  grounds,  and,  it  is  recorded,  once 
affrighted  a  servant-girl  by  opening  the  door  in  an  absent-minded 
moment,  thus  unattired. 

Bikli  seems  to  have  been  the  apostle  of  air-baths  and  sun-baths 
regarded  as  a  systematic  method.  He  established  light-  and  air-baths 
over  half  a  century  ago  at  Trieste  and  elsewhere  in  Austria.  His  motto 
was:  "Light,  Truth,  and  Freedom  are  the  motive  forces  towards  the 
highest  development  of  physical  and  moral  health."  Man  is  not  a  fish, 
he  declared;  light  and  air  are  the  first  conditions  of  a  highly  organized 
life.  Solaria  for  the  treatment  of  a  number  of  different  disordered  con- 
ditions are  now  commonly  established,  and  most  systems  of  natural 
therapeutics  attach  prime  importance  to  light  and  air,  while  in  medicine 
generally  it  is  beginning  to  be  recognized  that  such  influences  can  by 
no  means  be  neglected.  Dr.  Fernand  Sandoz,  in  his  Introduction  a  la 
Therapeutique  Naturiste  par  les  agents  Physiques  et  Dietetiques  (1907) 
sets  forth  such  methods  comprehensively.  In  Germany  sun-baths  have 
become  widely  common;  thus  Lenkei  (in  a  paper  summarized  in  British 
Medical  Journal,  Oct.  31,  1903)  prescribes  them  with  much  benefit  in 
tuberculosis,  rheumatic  conditions,  obesity,  anaemia,  neurasthenia,  etc. 
He  considers  that  their  peculiar  value  lies  in  the  action  of  light.  Pro- 
fessor J.  N.  Hyde,  of  Chicago,  even  believes  ("Light-Hunger  in  the  Pro- 
duction  of   Psoriasis,"   British    Medical   Journal,   Oct.    6,    1906),   that 


SEXUAL   EDUCATION   AND   NAKEDNESS.  105 

psoriasis  is  caused  by  deficiency  of  sunlight,  and  is  best  cured  by  the 
application  of  light.  This  belief,  which  has  not,  however,  been  generally 
accepted  in  its  unqualified  form,  he  ingeniously  supports  by  the  fact  that 
psoriasis  tends  to  appear  on  the  most  exposed  parts  of  the  body,  which 
may  be  held  to  naturally  receive  and  require  the  maximum  of  light,  and 
by  the  absence  of  the  disease  in  hot  countries  and  among  negroes. 

The  hygienic  value  of  nakedness  is  indicated  by  the  robust  health 
of  the  savages  throughout  the  world  who  go  naked.  The  vigor  of  the 
Irish,  also,  has  been  connected  with  the  fact  that  (as  Fynes  Moryson's 
Itinerary  shows)  both  sexes,  even  among  persons  of  high  social  class, 
were  accustomed  to  go  naked  except  for  a  mantle,  especially  in  more 
remote  parts  of  the  country,  as  late  as  the  seventeenth  century.  Where- 
ever  primitive  races  abandon  nakedness  for  clothing,  at  once  the  tendency 
to  disease,  mortality,  and  degeneracy  notably  increases,  though  it  must 
be  remembered  that  the  use  of  clothing  is  commonly  accompanied  by  the 
introduction  of  other  bad  habits.  "Nakedness  is  the  only  condition 
universal  among  vigorous  and  healthy  savages ;  at  every  other  point  per- 
haps they  differ,"  remarks  Frederick  Boyle  in  a  paper  ("Savages  and 
Clothes,"  Monthly  Review,  Sept.,  1905)  in  which  he  brings  together 
much  evidence  concerning  the  hygienic  advantages  of  the  natural  human 
state  in  which  man  is  "all  face." 

It  is  in  Germany  that  a  return  towards  nakedness  has  been  most 
ably  and  thoroughly  advocated,  notably  by  Dr.  H.  Pudor  in  his  Nackt- 
Cultur,  and  by  R.  Ungewitter  in  Die  Nacktheit  ( first  published  in  1905 ) , 
a  book  which  has  had  a  very  large  circulation  in  many  editions.  These 
writers  enthusiastically  advocate  nakedness,  not  only  on  hygienic,  but 
on  moral  and  artistic  grounds.  Pudor  insists  more  especially  that 
"nakedness,  both  in  gymnastics  and  in  sport,  is  a  method  of  cure  and 
a  method  of  regeneration;"  he  advocates  co-education  in  this  culture  of 
nakedness.  Although  he  makes  large  claims  for  nakedness — believing 
that  all  the  nations  which  have  disregarded  these  claims  have  rapidly 
become  decadent — Pudor  is  less  hopeful  than  Ungewitter  of  any  speedy 
victory  over  the  prejudices  opposed  to  the  culture  of  nakedness.  He 
considers  that  the  immediate  task  is  education,  and  that  a  practical  com- 
mencement may  best  be  made  with  the  foot  which  is  specially  in  need 
of  hygiene  and  exercise;  a  large  part  of  the  first  volume  of  his  book  is 
devoted  to  the  foot. 

As  the  matter  is  to-day  viewed  by  those  educationalists  who 
are  equally  alive  to  sanitary  and  sexual  considerations,  the  claims 
of  nakedness,  so  far  as  concerns  the  young,  are  regarded  as  part 
alike  of  physical  and  moral  hygiene.  The  free  contact  of  the 
naked  body  with  air  and  water  and  light  makes  for  the  health  of 


106  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   SEX. 

the  body;  familiarity  with  the  sight  of  the  body  abolishes  petty 
pruriencies,  trains  the  sense  of  beauty,  and  makes  for  the  health 
of  the  soul.  This  double  aspect  of  the  matter  has  undoubtedly 
weighed  greatly  with  those  teachers  who  now  approve  of  customs 
which,  a  few  years  ago,  would  have  been  hastily  dismissed  as 
"indecent."  There  is  still  a  wide  difference  of  opinion  as  to  the 
limits  to  which  the  practice  of  nakedness  may  be  carried,  and  also 
as  to  the  age  when  it  should  begin  to  be  restricted.  The  fact  that 
the  adult  generation  of  to-clay  grew  up  under  the  influence  of  the 
old  horror  of  nakedness  is  an  inevitable  check  on  any  revolu- 
tionary changes  in  these  matters. 

Maria  Lischnewska,  one  of  the  ablest  advocates  of  the  methodical 
enlightenment  of  children  in  matters  of  sex  (op.  cit.) ,  clearly  realizes 
that  a  sane  attitude  towards  the  body  lies  at  the  root  of  a  sound  educa- 
tion for  life.  She  finds  that  the  chief  objection  encountered  in  such 
education,  as  applied  in  the  higher  classes  of  schools,  is  "the  horror  of 
the  civilized  man  at  his  own  body."  She  shows  that  there  can  be  no 
doubt  that  those  who  are  engaged  in  the  difficult  task  of  working 
towards  the  abolition  of  that  superstitious  horror  have  taken  up  a  moral 
task  of  the  first  importance. 

Walter  Gerhard,  in  a  thoughtful  and  sensible  paper  on  the  educa- 
tional question  C"'Ein  Kapitel  zur  Erziehungsfrage,  Geschlecht  und 
Gesellschaft,  vol.  i,  Heft  2),  points  out  that  it  is  the  adult  who  needs 
education  in  this  matter — as  in  so  many  other  matters  of  sexual  enlight- 
enment— considerably  more  than  the  child.  Parents  educate  their  chil- 
dren from  the  earliest  years  in  prudery,  and  vainly  flatter  themselves 
that  they  have  thereby  promoted  their  modesty  and  morality.  Ha 
records  his  own  early  life  in  a  tropical  land  and  accustomed  to  naked- 
ness from  the  first.  "It  was  not  till  I  eame  to  Germany  when  nearly 
twenty  that  I  learnt  that  the  human  body  is  indecent,  and  that  it  must 
not  be  shown  because  that  'would  arouse  bad  impulses.'  It  was  not  till 
the  human  body  was  entirely  withdrawn  from  my  sight  and  after  I  was 
constantly  told  that  there  was  something  improper  behind  clothes,  that 

I  was  able  to  understand  this Until  then  I  had  not  known 

that  a  naked  body,  by  the  mere  fact  of  being  naked,  could  arouse  erotic 
feelings.  I  had  known  erotic  feelings,  but  they  had  not  arisen  from  the 
sight  of  the  naked  body,  but  gradually  blossomed  from  the  union  of  our 
souls."  And  he  draws  the  final  moral  that,  if  only  for  the  sake  of  our 
children,  we  must  learn  to  educate  ourselves. 

Forel  (Die  Sexuelle  Frage,  p.  140),  speaking  in  entirely  the  same 
sense  as  Gerhard,  remarks  that  prudery  may  be  either  caused  or  cured 


SEXUAL    EDUCATION   AND    NAKEDNESS.  107 

in  children.  It  may  be  caused  by  undue  anxiety  in  covering  their  bodies 
and  hiding  from  them  the  bodies  of  others.  It  may  be  cured  by  making 
them  realize  that  there  is  nothing  in  the  body  that  is  unnatural  and 
that  we  need  be  ashamed  of,  and  by  encouraging  bathing  of  the  sexes  in 
common.  He  points  out  (p.  512)  the  advantages  of  allowing  children 
to  be  acquainted  with  the  adult  forms  which  they  will  themselves  some 
day  assume,  and  condemns  the  conduct  of  those  foolish  persons  who 
assume  that  children  already  possess  the  adult's  erotic  feelings  about 
the  body.  That  is  so  far  from  being  the  case  that  children  are  fre- 
quently unable  to  distinguish  the  sex  of  other  children  apart  from  their 
clothes. 

At  the  Mannheim  Congress  of  the  German  Society  for  Combating 
Venereal  Diseases,  specially  devoted  to  sexual  hygiene,  the  speakers  con- 
stantly referred  to  the  necessity  of  promoting  familiarity  with  the  naked 
body.  Thus  Eulenbttrg  and  Julian  Marcuse  (Sexualpadagogik,  p.  264) 
emphasize  the  importance  of  air-baths,  not  only  for  the  sake  of  the 
physical  health  of  the  young,  but  in  the  interests  of  rational  sexual 
training.  Holler,  a  teacher,  speaking  at  the  same  congress  (op.  cit.,  p. 
85),  after  insisting  on  familiarity  with  the  nude  in  art  and  literature, 
and  protesting  against  the  bowdlerising  of  poems  for  the  young,  con- 
tinues: "By  bathing-drawers  ordinances  no  soul  was  ever  yet  saved 
from  moral  ruin.  One  who  has  learnt  to  enjoy  peacefully  the  naked  in 
art  is  only  stirred  by  the  naked  in  nature  as  by  a  work  of  art."  Ender- 
lin,  another  teacher,  speaking  in  the  same  sense  (p.  58),  points  out 
that  nakedness  cannot  act  sexually  or  immorally  on  the  child,  since  the 
sexual  impulse  has  not  yet  become  pronounced,  and  the  earlier  he  is 
introduced  to  the  naked  in  nature  and  in  art,  as  a  matter  of  course,  the 
less  likely  are  the  sexual  feelings  to  be  developed  precociously.  The 
child  thus,  indeed,  becomes  immune  to  impure  influences,  so  that  later, 
when  representations  of  the  nude  are  brought  before  him  for  the  object 
of  provoking  his  wantonness,  they  are  powerless  to  injure  him.  It  is 
important,  Enderlin  adds,  for  familiarity  with  the  nude  in  art  to  be 
learnt  at  school,  for  most  of  us,  as  Siebert  remarks,  have  to  learn  purity 
through  art. 

Nakedness  in  bathing,  remarks  Bolsche  in  his  Liebesleben  in  der 
~Natur  (vol.  iii,  pp.  139  et  seq.) ,  we  already  in  some  measure  possess; 
we  need  it  in  physical  exercises,  at  first  for  the  sexes  separately;  then, 
when  we  have  grown,  accustomed  to  the  idea,  occasionally  for  both  sexes 
together.  We  need  to  acquire  the  capacity  to  see  the  bodies  of  individ- 
uals of  the  other  sex  with  such  self-control  and  such  natural  instinct 
that  they  become  non-erotic  to  us  and  can  be  gazed  at  without  erotic 
feeling.  Art,  he  says,  shows  that  this  is  possible  in  civilization. 
Science,  he  adds,  comes  to  the  aid  of  the  same  vieAV. 

Ungewitter   (Die  Nacktheit,  p.  57)   also  advocates  boys  and  girls 


108  PSYCHOLOGY    OF   SEX. 

engaging  in  play  and  gymnastics  together,  entirely  naked  in  air-baths. 
"In  this  way,"  he  believes,  "the  gymnasium  would  become  a  school  of 
morality,  in  which  young  growing  things  would  be  able  to  retain  their 
purity  as  long  as  possible  through  becoming  naturally  accustomed  to 
each  other.  At  the  same  time  their  bodies  would  be  hardened  and 
developed,  and  the  perception  of  beautiful  and  natural  forms  awakened." 
To  those  who  have  any  "moral"  doubts  on  the  matter,  he  mentions  the 
custom  in  remote  country  districts  of  boys  and  girls  bathing  together 
quite  naked  and  without  any  sexual  consciousness.  Rudolf  Sommer, 
similarly,  in  an  excellent  article  entitled  "Madchenerziehung  oder  Men- 
schenbildung ?"  (Geschlecht  und  Gesellschaft,  Bd.  i,  Heft  3)  advises  that 
children  should  be  made  accustomed  to  each  other's  nakedness  from  an 
early  age  in  the  family  life  of  the  house  or  the  garden,  in  games,  and 
especially  in  bathing;  he  remarks  that  parents  having  children  of  only 
one  sex  should  cultivate  for  their  children's  sake  intimate  relations  with 
a  family  having  children  of  like  age  of  the  opposite  sex,  so  that  they 
may  grow  up  together. 

It  is  scarcely  necessary  to  add  that  the  cultivation  of  naked- 
ness must  always  be  conciliated  with  respect  for  the  natural 
instincts  of  modesty.  If  the  practice  of  nakedness  led  the  young 
to  experience  a  diminished  reverence  for  their  own  or  others'  per- 
sonalities the  advantages  of  it  would  be  too  dearly  bought.  This 
is,  in  part,  a  matter  of  wholesome  instinct,  in  part  of  wise  train- 
ing. We  now  know  that  the  absence  of  clothes  has  little  relation 
with  the  absence  of  modesty,  such  relation  as  there  is  being  of 
the  inverse  order,  for  the  savage  races  which  go  naked  are  usually 
more  modest  than  those  which  wear  clothes.  The  saying  quoted 
by  Herodotus  in  the  early  Greek  world  that  "A  woman  takes  off 
her  modesty  with  her  shift"  was  a  favorite  text  of  the  Christian 
Fathers.  But  Plutarch,  who  was  also  a  moralist,  had  already 
protested  against  it  at  the  close  of  the  Greek  world:  "By  no 
means,"  he  declared,  "she  who  is  modest  clothes  herself  with 
modesty  when  she  lays  aside  her  tunic."  "A  woman  may  be 
naked,"  as  Mrs.  Bishop,  the  traveller,  remarked  to  Dr.  Baelz,  in 
Japan,  "and  yet  behave  like  a  lady."1 

The  question  is  complicated  among  ourselves  because  estab- 


i  See  "The  Evolution  of  Modesty"  in  the  first  volume  of  these 
Studies,  where  this  question  of  the  relationship  of  nakedness  to  modesty 
is  fully  discussed. 


SEXUAL   EDUCATION    AND    NAKEDNESS.  109 

lislied  traditions  of  rigid  concealment  have  fostered  a  pruriency 
which  is  an  offensive  insult  to  naked  modesty.  In  many  lands 
the  women  who  are  accustomed  to  be  almost  or  quite  naked  in  the 
presence  of  their  own  people  cover  themselves  as  soon  as  they 
become  conscious  of  the  lustful  inquisitive  eyes  of  Europeans. 
Stratz  refers  to  the  prevalence  of  this  impulse  of  offended 
modesty  in  Japan,  and  mentions  that  he  himself  failed  to  arouse 
it  simply  because  he  was  a  physician,  and,  moreover,  had  long- 
lived  in  another  land  (Java)  where  also  the  custom  of  naked- 
ness prevails.1  So  long  as  this  unnatural  prurience  exists  a  free 
unqualified  nakedness  is  rendered  difficult. 

Modesty  is  not,  however,  the  only  natural  impulse  which 
has  to  be  considered  in  relation  to  the  custom  of  nakedness.  It 
seems  probable  that  in  cultivating  the  practice  of  nakedness  we 
are  not  merely  carrying  out  a  moral  and  hygienic  prescription 
but  allowing  legitimate  scope  to  an  instinct  which  at  some 
periods  of  life,  especially  in  adolescence,  is  spontaneous  and 
natural,  even,  it  may  be,  wholesomely  based  in  the  traditions  of 
the  race  in  sexual  selection.  Our  rigid  conventions  make  it 
impossible  for  us  to  discover  the  laws  of  nature  in  this  matter 
by  stifling  them  at  the  outset.  It  may  well  be  that  there  is  a 
rhythmic  harmony  and  concordance  between  impulses  of  modesty 
and  impulses  of  ostentation,  though  we  have  done  our  best  to 
disguise  the  natural  law  by  our  stupid  and  perverse  by-laws. 

Stanley  Hall,  who  emphasizes  the  importance  of  nakedness,  remarks 
that  at  puberty  we  have  much  reason  to  assume  that  in  a  state  of  nature 
there  is  a  certain  instinctive  pride  and  ostentation  that  accompanies  the 
new  local  development,  and  quotes  the  observation  of  Dr.  Seerley  that 
the  impulse  to  conceal  the  sexual  organs  is  especially  marked  in  young 
men  who  are  underdeveloped,  but  not  evident  in  those  who  are  developed 
beyond  the  average.  Stanley  Hall  (Adolescence,  vol.  ii,  p.  97),  also 
refers  to  the  frequency  with  which  not  only  "virtuous  young  men,  but 
even  women,  rather  glory  in  occasions  when  they  can  display  the  beauty 
of  their  forms  without  reserve,  not  only  to  themselves  and  to  loved  ones, 
but  even  to  others  with  proper  pretexts." 

Many  have  doubtless  noted  this  tendency,  especially  in  women,  and 


1  C.  H.  Stratz,  Die  Korperformen  in  Kunst  und  Leoen  der  Japaner, 
Second  edition,  Ch.  Ill;    id.,  Frauenkleidung,  Third  edition,  pp.  22,  30. 


110  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   SEX. 

chiefly  in  those  who  are  conscious  of  beautiful  physical  development. 
Madame  Celine  Renooz  believes  that  the  tendency  corresponds  to  a  really 
deep-rooted  instinct  in  women,  little  or  not  at  all  manifested  in  men 
who  have  consequently  sought  to  impose  artificially  on  women  their  own 
masculine  conceptions  of  modesty.  "In  the  actual  life  of  the  young  girl 
to-day  there  is  a  moment  when,  by  a  secret  atavism,  she  feels  the  pride 
of  her  sex,  the  intuition  of  her  moral  superiority  and  cannot  understand 
why  she  must  hide  its  cause.  At  this  moment,  wavering  between  the 
laws  of  Nature  and  social  conventions,  she  scarcely  knows  if  nakedness 
should,  or  should  not,  affright  her.  A  sort  of  confused  atavistic  memory 
recalls  to  her  a  period  before  clothing  was  known,  and  reveals  to  her  as 
a  paradisaical  ideal  the  customs  of  that  human  epoch"  (Celine  Renooz, 
Psychologie  Comparee  de  V Homme  et  de  la  Femme,  pp.  85-87).  Perhaps 
this  was  obscurely  felt  by  the  German  girl  (mentioned  in  Kalbeck's  Life 
of  Brahms ) ,  who  said :     "One  enjoys  music  twice  as  much  decolletee." 

From  the  point  of  view  with  which  we  are  here  essentially 
concerned  there  are  three  ways  in  which  the  cultivation  of 
nakedness — so  far  as  it  is  permitted  by  the  slow  education  of 
public  opinion — tends  to  exert  an  influence:  (1)  It  is  an 
important  element  in  the  sexual  hygiene  of  the  young,  intro- 
ducing a  wholesome  knowledge  and  incuriosity  into  a  sphere 
once  given  up  to  prudery  and  pruriency.  (2)  The  effect  of 
nakedness  is  beneficial  on  those  of  more  mature  age,  also,  in  so 
far  as  it  tends  to  cultivate  the  sense  of  beauty  and  to  furnish  the 
tonic  and  consoling  influences  of  natural  vigor  and  grace.  (3) 
The  custom  of  nakedness,  in  its  inception  at  all  events,  has  a 
dynamic  psychological  influence  also  on  morals,  an  influence 
exerted  in  the  substitution  of  a  strenuous  and  positive  morality 
for  the  merely  negative  and  timid  morality  which  has  ruled  in 
this  sphere. 

Perhaps  there  are  not  many  adults  who  realize  the  intense 
and  secret  absorption  of  thought  in  the  minds  of  many  boys  and 
some  girls  concerning  the  problem  of  the  physical  conformation 
of  the  other  sex,  and  the  time,  patience,  and  intellectual  energy 
which  they  are  willing  to  expend  on  the  solution  of  this  problem. 
This  is  mostly  effected  in  secret,  but  not  seldom  the  secret 
impulse  manifests  itself  with  a  sudden  violence  which  in  the 
blind  eyes  of  the  law  is  reckoned  as  crime.  A  German  lawyer, 
Dr.  Werthauer,  has  lately  stated  that  if  there  were  a  due  degree 


SEXUAL   EDUCATION"   AND   NAKEDNESS.  Ill 

of  familiarity  with  the  natural  organs  and  functions  of  the 
opposite  sex  ninety  per  cent,  of  the  indecent  acts  of  youths  with 
girl  children  would  disappear,  for  in  most  cases  these  are  not 
assaults  but  merely  the  innocent,  though  uncontrollable,  out- 
come of  a  repressed  natural  curiosity.  It  is  quite  true  that  not  a 
few  children  boldly  enlist  each  others'  cooperation  in  the 
settlement  of  the  question  and  resolve  it  to  their  mutual  satis- 
faction. But  even  this  is  not  altogether  satisfactory,  for  the 
end  is  not  attained  openly  and  wholesomety,  with  a  due  sub- 
ordination of  the  specifically  sexual,  but  with  a  consciousness  of 
wrong-doing  and  an  exclusive  attentiveness  to  the  merely 
physical  fact  which  tend  directly  to  develop  sexual  excitement. 
When  familiarity  with  the  naked  body  of  the  other  sex  is  gained 
openly  and  with  no  consciousness  of  indecorum,  in  the  course  of 
work  and  of  play,  in  exercise  or  gymnastics,  in  running  or  in 
bathing,  from  a  child's  earliest  years,  no  unwholesome  results 
accompany  the  knowledge  of  the  essential  facts  of  physical 
conformation  thus  natural!}'  acquired.  The  prurience  and 
prudery  which  have  poisoned  sexual  life  in  the  past  are  alike 
rendered  impossible. 

Nakedness  has,  however,  a  hygienic  value,  as  well  as  a 
spiritual  significance,  far  beyond  its  influences  in  allaying  the 
natural  inquisitiveness  of  the  young  or  acting  as  a  preventative 
of  morbid  emotion.  It  is  an  inspiration  to  adults  who  have  long 
outgrown  any  youthful  curiosities.  The  vision  of  the  essential 
and  eternal  human  form,  the  nearest  thing  to  us  in  all  the 
world,  with  its  vigor  and  its  beauty  and  its  grace,  is  one  of  the 
prime  tonics  of  life.  "The  power  of  a  woman's  body,"  said 
James  Hinton,  "is  no  more  bodily  than  the  power  of  music  is  a 
power  of  atmospheric  vibrations."  It  is  more  than  all  the 
beautiful  and  stimulating  things  of  the  world,  than  flowers  or 
stars  or  the  sea.  History  and  legend  and  myth  reveal  to  us  the 
sacred  and  awful  influence  of  nakedness,  for,  as  Stanley  Hall 
says,  nakedness  has  always  been  "a  talisman  of  wondrous  power 
with  gods  and  men."  How  sorely  men  crave  for  the  spectacle  of 
the  human  body — even  to-day  after  generations  have  inculcated 
the  notion  that  it  is  an  indecorous  and  even  disgusting  spectacle 


112  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   SEX. 

— is  witnessed  by  the  eagerness  with  which  they  seek  after  the 
spectacle  of  even  its  imperfect  and  meretricious  forms,  although 
these  certainly  possess  a  headj  and  stimulating  quality  which 
can  never  be  found  in  the  pathetic  simplicity  of  naked  beauty. 
It  was  another  spectacle  when  the  queens  of  ancient  Madagascar 
at  the  annual  Fandroon,  or  feast  of  the  bath,  laid  aside  their 
royal  robes  and  while  their  subjects  crowded  the  palace  courtyard, 
descended  the  marble  steps  to  the  bath  in  complete  nakedness. 
When  we  make  our  conventions  of  clothing  rigid  we  at  once 
spread  a  feast  for  lust  and  deny  ourselves  one  of  the  prime  tonics 
of  life. 

"I  was  feeling  in  despair  and  walking  despondently  along  a  Mel- 
bourne street,"  writes  the  Australian  author  of  a  yet  unpublished  auto- 
biography, "when  three  children  came  running  out  of  a  lane  and  crossed 
the  road  in  full  daylight.  The  beauty  and  texture  of  their  legs  in  the 
open  air  filled  me  with  joy,  so  that  I  forgot  all  my  troubles  whilst 
looking  at  them.  It  was  a  bright  revelation,  an  unexpected  glimpse  of 
Paradise,  and  I  have  never  ceased  to  thank  the  happy  combination  of 
shape,  pure  blood,  and  fine  skin  of  these  poverty-stricken  children,  for 
the  wind  seemed  to  quicken  their  golden  beauty,  and  I  retained  the  rosy 
vision  of  their  natural  young  limbs,  so  much  more  divine  than  those 
always  under  cover.  Another  occasion  when  naked  young  limbs  made 
me  forget  all  my  gloom  and  despondency  was  on  my  first  visit  to 
Adelaide.  I  came  on  a  naked  boy  leaning  on  the  railing  near  the  Baths, 
and  the  beauty  of  his  face,  torso,  fair  young  limbs  and  exquisite  feet 
filled  me  with  joy  and  renewed  hope.  The  tears  came  to  my  eyes,  and  I 
said  to  myself,  'While  there  is  beauty  in  the  world  I  will  continue  to 
struggle.' " 

We  must,  as  Bolsche  declares  (loo.  cit) ,  accustom  ourselves  to  gaze 
on  the  naked  human  body  exactly  as  we  gaze  at  a  beautiful  flower,  not 
merely  with  the  pity  with  which  the  doctor  looks  at  the  body,  but  with 
joy  in  its  strength  and  health  and  beauty.  For  a  flower,  as  Bolsche 
truly  adds,  is  not  merely  "naked  body,"  it  is  the  most  sacred  region  of 
the  body,  the  sexual  organs  of  the  plant. 

"For  girls  to  dance  naked,"  said  Hinton,  "is  the  only  truly  pure 
form  of  dancing,  and  in  due  time  it  must  therefore  come  about.  This  is 
certain:  girls  will  dance  naked  and  men  will  be  pure  enough  to  gaze 
on  them."  It  has  already  been  so  in  Greece,  he  elsewhere  remarks,  as 
it  is  to-day  in  Japan  (as  more  recently  described  by  Stratz).  It  is 
nearly  forty  years  since  these  prophetic  words  were  written,  but  Hinton 
himself  would  probably  have  been  surprised  at  the  progress  which  has 


SEXUAL   EDUCATION   AND   NAKEDNESS.  113 

already  been  made  slowly  (for  all  true  progress  must  be  slow)  towards 
this  goal.  Even  on  the  stage  new  and  more  natural  traditions  are  begin- 
ning to  prevail  in  Europe.  It  is  not  many  years  since  an  English  actress 
regarded  as  a  calumny  the  statement  that  she  appeared  on  the  stage 
bare-foot,  and  brought  an  action  for  libel,  winning  substantial  damages. 
Such  a  result  would  scarcely  be  possible  to-day.  The  movement  in  which 
Isadora  Duncan  was  a  pioneer  has  led  to  a  partial  disuse  among  dancers 
of  the  offensive  device  of  tights,  and  it  is  no  longer  considered  indecor- 
ous to  show  many  parts  of  the  body  which  it  was  formerly  usual  to 
cover. 

It  should,  however,  be  added  at  the  same  time  that,  while  dancers, 
in  so  far  as  they  are  genuine  artists,  are  entitled  to  determine  the  con- 
ditions most  favorable  to  their  art,  nothing  whatever  is  gained  for  the 
cause  of  a  wholesome  culture  of  nakedness  by  the  "living  statues"  and 
"living  pictures"  which  have  obtained  an  international  vogue  during 
recent  years.  These  may  be  legitimate  as  variety  performances,  but 
they  have  nothing  whatever  to  do  with  either  Nature  or  art.  Dr.  Pudor, 
writing  as  one  of  the  earliest  apostles  of  the  culture  of  nakedness,  has 
energetically  protested  against  these  performances  {Sexual-Probleme, 
Dec,  1908,  p.  828).  He  rightly  points  out  that  nakedness,  to  be  whole- 
some, requires  the  open  air,  the  meadows,  the  sunlight,  and  that  naked- 
ness at  night,  in  a  music  hall,  by  artificial  light,  in  the  presence  of 
spectators  who  are  themselves  clothed,  has  no  element  of  morality  about 
it.  Attempts  have  here  and  there  been  quietly  made  to  cultivate  a  cer- 
tain amount  of  mutual  nakedness  as  between  the  sexes  on  remote  country 
excursions.  It  is  significant  to  find  a  record  of  such  an  experiment  in 
Ungewitter's  Die  Nacktheit.  In  this  case  a  party  of  people,  men  and 
women,  wotild  regularly  every  Sunday  seek  remote  spots  in  woods  or 
meadows  where  they  would  settle  down,  picnic,  and  enjoy  games.  "They 
made  themselves  as  comfortable  as  possible,  the  men  laying  aside  their 
coats,  waistcoats,  boots  and  socks;  the  women  their  blouses,  skirts, 
shoes  and  stockings.  Gradually,  as  the  moral  conception  of  nakedness 
developed  in  their  minds,  more  and  more  clothing  fell  away,  until  the 
men  wore  nothing  but  bathing-drawers  and  the  women  only  their 
chemises.  In  this  'costume'  games  were  carried  out  in  common,  and  a 
regular  camp-life  led.  The  ladies  (some  of  whom  were  unmarried) 
would  then  lie  in  hammocks  and  we  men  on  the  grass,  and  the  inter- 
course was  delightful.  We  felt  as  members  of  one  family,  and  behaved 
accordingly.  In  an  entirely  natural  and  unembarrassed  way  we  gave 
ourselves  up  entirely  to  the  liberating  feelings  aroused  by  this  light-  and 
air-bath,  and  passed  these  splendid  hours  in  joyous  singing  and  dancing, 
in  wantonly  childish  fashion,  freed  from  the  burden  of  a  false  civiliza- 
tion. It  was,  of  course,  necessary  to  seek  spots  as  remote  as  possible 
from  high-roads,  for  fear  of  being  disturbed.    At  the  same  time  we  by 

s 


114  PSYCHOLOGY   OP   SEX. 

no  means  failed  in  natural  modesty  and  consideration  towards  one 
another.  Children,  who  can  be  entirely  naked,  may  be  allowed  to  take 
part  in  such  meetings  of  adults,  and  will  thus  be  brought  up  free  from 
morbid  prudery"  (R.  Ungewitter,  Die  NacJctheit,  p.  58). 

No  doubt  it  may  be  said  that  the  ideal  in  this  matter  is  the  pos- 
sibility of  permitting  complete  nakedness.  This  may  be  admitted,  and 
it  is  undoubtedly  true  that  our  rigid  police  regulations  do  much  to 
artificially  foster  a  concealment  in  this  matter  which  is  not  based  on 
any  natural  instinct.  Dr.  Shufeldt  narrates  in  his  Studies  of  the 
Human  Form  that  once  in  the  course  of  a  photographic  expedition  in 
the  woods  he  came  upon  two  boys,  naked  except  for  bathing-drawers, 
engaged  in  getting  water  lilies  from  a  pond.  He  found  them  a  good 
subject  for  his  camera,  but  they  could  not  be  induced  to  remove  their 
drawers,  by  no  means  out  of  either  modesty  or  mock-modesty,  but  simply 
because  they  feared  they  might  possibly  be  caught  and  arrested.  We 
have  to  recognize  that  at  the  present  day  the  general  popular  sentiment 
is  not  yet  sufficiently  educated  to  allow  of  public  disregard  for  the  con- 
vention of  covering  the  sexual  centres,  and  all  attempts  to  extend  the 
bounds  of  nakedness  must  show  a  due  regard  for  this  requirement.  As 
concerns  women,  Valentin  Lehr,  of  Freiburg,  in  Breisgau,  has  invented 
a  costume  (figured  in  Ungewitter's  Die  Nacktheit)  which  is  suitable  for 
either  public  water-baths  or  air-baths,  because  it  meets  the  demand  of 
those  whose  minimum  requirement  is  that  the  chief  sexual  centres  of 
the  body  should  be  covered  in  public,  while  it  is  otherwise  fairly  unob- 
jectionable. It  consists  of  two  pieces,  made  of  porous  material,  one 
covering  the  breasts  with  a  band  over  the  shoulders,  and  the  other  cov- 
ering the  abdomen  below  the  navel  and  drawn  between  the  legs.  This 
minimal  costume,  while  neither  ideal  nor  aesthetic,  adequately  covers  the 
sexual  regions  of  the  body,  while  leaving  the  arms,  waist,  hips,  and  legs 
entirely  free. 

There  finally  remains  the  moral  aspect  of  nakedness. 
Although  this  has  been  emphasized  by  many  during  the  past  half 
century  it  is  still  unfamiliar  to  the  majority.  The  human  body 
can  never  be  a  little  thing.  The  wise  educator  may  see  to  it 
that  boys  and  girls  are  brought  up  in  a  natural  and  wholesome 
familiarity  with  each  other,  but  a  certain  terror  and  beauty 
must  always  attach  to  the  spectacle  of  the  body,  a  mixed  attrac- 
tion and  repulsion.  Because  it  has  this  force  it  naturally  calls 
out  the  virtue  of  those  who  take  part  in  the  spectacle,  and  makes 
impossible  any  soft  compliance  to  emotion.  Even  if  we  admit 
that  the  spectacle  of  nakedness  is  a  challenge  to  passion  it  is  still 


SEXUAL   EDUCATION   AND   NAKEDNESS.  115 

a  challenge  that  calls  out  the  ennobling  qualities  of  self-control. 
It  is  but  a  poor  sort  of  virtue  that  lies  in  fleeing  into  the  desert 
from  things  that  we  fear  may  have  in  them  a  temptation.  We 
have  to  learn  that  it  is  even  worse  to  attempt  to  create  a  desert 
around  us  in  the  midst  of  civilization.  We  cannot  dispense  with 
passions  if  we  would;  reason,  as  Holbaeh  said,  is  the  art  of 
choosing  the  right  passions,  and  education  the  art  of  sowing  and 
cultivating  them  in  human  hearts.  The  spectacle  of  nakedness 
has  its  moral  value  in  teaching  us  to  learn  to  enjoy  what  we  do 
not  possess,  a  lesson  which  is  an  essential  part  of  the  training 
for  any  kind  of  fine  social  life.  The  child  has  to  learn  to  look  at 
flowers  and  not  pluck  them;  the  man  has  to  learn  to  look  at  a 
woman's  beauty  and  not  desire  to  possess  it.  The  joyous  con- 
quest over  that  "erotic  kleptomania,"  as  Ellen  Key  has  well  said, 
reveals  the  blossoming  of  a  fine  civilization.  We  fancy  the 
conquest  is  difficult,  even  impossibly  difficult.  But  it  is  not  so. 
This  impulse,  like  other  human  impulses,  tends  under  natural 
conditions  to  develop  temperately  and  wholesomely.  We  arti- 
ficially press  a  stupid  and  brutal  hand  on  it,  and  it  is  driven  into 
the  two  unnatural  extremes  of  repression  and  license,  one 
extreme  as  foul  as  the  other. 

To  those  who  have  been  bred  under  bad  conditions,  it  may 
indeed  seem  hopeless  to  attempt  to  rise  to  the  level  of  the  Greeks 
and  the  other  finer  tempered  peoples  of  antiquity  in  realizing  the 
moral,  as  well  as  the  pedagogic,  hygienic,  and  gesthetic  advan- 
tages1 of  admitting  into  life  the  spectacle  of  the  naked  human 

1 1  have  not  considered  it  in  place  here  to  emphasize  the  gesthetic 
influence  of  familiarity  with  nakedness.  The  most  aesthetic  nations  ( not- 
ably the  Greeks  and  the  Japanese)  have  been  those  that  preserved  a 
certain  degree  of  familiarity  with  the  naked  body.  "In  all  arts," 
Maeterlinck  remarks,  "civilized  peoples  have  approached  or  departed 
from  pure  beauty  according  as  they  approached  or  departed  from  the 
habit  of  nakedness."  Ungewitter  insists  on  the  advantage  to  the  artist 
of  being  able  to  study  the  naked  body  in  movement,  and  it  may  be  worth 
mentioning  that  Fidus  (Hugo  Hoppener),  the  German  artist  of  to-day 
who  has  exerted  great  influence  by  his  fresh,  powerful  and  yet  reverent 
delineation  of  the  naked  human  form  in  all  its  varying  aspects, 
attributes  his  inspiration  and  vision  to  the  fact  that,  as  a  pupil  of 
Diefenbach,  he  was  accustomed  with  his  companions  to  work  naked  in 
the  solitudes  outside  Munich  which  they  frequented  (F.  Enzensberger, 
"Fidus,"  Deutsche  Kultur,  Aug.,  1906). 


116  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

body.  But  unless  we  do  we  hopelessly  fetter  ourselves  in  our 
march  along  the  road  of  civilization,  we  deprive  ourselves  at  once 
of  a  source  of  moral  strength  and  of  joyous  inspiration.  Just  as 
Wesley  once  asked  why  the  devil  should  have  all  the  best  tunes, 
so  to-day  men  are  beginning  to  ask  why  the  human  body,  the 
most  divine  melody  at  its  finest  moments  that  creation  has 
yielded,  should  be  allowed  to  become  the  perquisite  of  those  who 
lust  for  the  obscene.  And  some  are,  further,  convinced  that  by 
enlisting  it  on  the  side  of  purity  and  strength  they  are  raising 
the  most  powerful  of  all  bulwarks  against  the  invasion  of  a 
vicious  conception  of  life  and  the  consequent  degradation  of  sex. 
These  are  considerations  which  we  cannot  longer  afford  to  neglect, 
however  great  the  opposition  they  arouse  among  the  unthinking. 

"Folk  are  afraid  of  such  things  rousing  the  passions,"  Edward 
Carpenter  remarks.  "No  doubt  the  things  may  act  that  way.  But  why, 
we  may  ask,  should  people  be  afraid  of  rousing  passions  which,  after  all, 
are  the  great  driving  forces  of  human  life  ?"  It  is  true,  the  same  writer 
continues,  our  conventional  moral  formulae  are  no  longer  strong  enough 
to  control  passion  adequately,  and  that  we  are  generating  steam  in  a 
boiler  that  is  cankered  with  rust.  "The  cure  is  not  to  cut  off  the  pas- 
sions, or  to  be  weakly  afraid  of  them,  but  to  find  a  new,  sound,  healthy 
engine  of  general  morality  and  common  sense  within  which  they  will 
work"   (Edward  Carpenter,  Albany  Review,  Sept.,  1907). 

So  far  as  I  am  aware,  however,  it  was  James  Hinton  who  chiefly 
sought  to  make  clear  the  possibility  of  a  positive  morality  on  the  basis 
of  nakedness,  beauty,  and  sexual  influence,  regarded  as  dynamic  forces 
which,  when  suppressed,  make  for  corruption  and  when  wisely  used 
serve  to  inspire  and  ennoble  life.  He  worked  out  his  thoughts  on  this 
matter  in  MSS.,  written  from  about  1870  to  his  death  two  years  later, 
which,  never  having  been  prepared  for  publication,  remain  in  a  frag- 
mentary state  and  have  not  been  published.  I  quote  a  few  brief  charac- 
teristic passages:  "Is  not,"  he  wrote,  "the  Hindu  refusal  to  see  a 
woman  eating  strangely  like  ours  to  see  one  naked?     The  real  sensuality 

of  the  thought  is  visibly   identical Suppose,   because  they 

are  delicious  to  eat,  pineapples  were  forbidden  to  be  seen,  except  in 
pictures,  and  about  that  there  was  something  dubious.  Suppose  no  one 
might  have  sight  of  a  pineapple  unless  he  were  rich  enough  to  purchase 
one  for  his  particular  eating,  the  sight  and  the  eating  being  so  indis- 
solubly  joined.     What  lustfulness  would  surround  them,  what  constant 

pruriency,    what    stealing!     ....     Miss    told    us    of    her 

Syrian  adventures,  and  how  she  went  into  a  wood-carver's  shop  and  he 


SEXUAL   EDUCATION   AND   NAKEDNESS.  117 

would  not  look  at  her;  and  how  she  took  up  a  tool  and  worked,  till  at 
last  he  looked,  and  they  both  burst  out  laughing.  Will  it  not  be  even 
so  with  our  looking  at  women  altogether?     There  will  come  a  work — 

and  at  last  we  shall  look  up  and  both  burst  out  laughing 

When  men  see  truly  what  is  amiss,  and  act  with  reason  and  forethought 
in  respect  to  the  sexual  relations,  will  they  not  insist  on  the  enjoyment 
of  women's  beauty  by  youths,  and  from  the  earliest  age,  that  the  first 
feeling  may  be  of  beauty?  Will  they  not  say,  'We  must  not  allow  the 
false  purity,  we  must  have  the  true.'  The  false  has  been  tried,  and  it 
is  not  good  enough;  the  power  purely  to  enjoy  beauty  must  be  gained; 
attempting  to  do  with  less  is  fatal.  Every  instructor  of  youth  shall 
say:  'This  beauty  of  woman,  God's  chief  work  of  beauty,  it  is  good  you 
see  it;  it  is  a  pleasure  that  serves  good;  all  beauty  serves  it,  and  above 
all  this,  for  its  office  is  to  make  you  pure.  Come  to  it  as  you  come  to 
daily  bread,  or  pure  air,  or  the  cleansing  bath :  this  is  pure  to  you  if 
you  be  pure,  it  will  aid  you  in  your  effort  to  be  so.  But  if  any  of  you 
are  impure,  and  make  of  it  the  feeder  of  impurity,  then  you  should  be 
ashamed  and  pray;  it  is  not  for  you  our  life  can  be  ordered;  it  is  for 
men  and  not  for  beasts.'  This  must  come  when  men  open  their  eyes, 
and  act  coolly  and  with  reason  and  forethought,  and  not  in  mere  panic 
in  respect  to  the  sexual  passion  in  its  moral  relations." 


CHAPTEE  IV. 
THE  VALUATION  OF  SEXUAL  LOVE. 

The  Conception  of  Sexual  Love — The  Attitude  of  Mediaeval  Asceti- 
cism— St.  Bernard  and  St.  Odo  of  Cluny — The  Ascetic  Insistence  on  the 
Proximity  of  the  Sexual  and  Excretory  Centres — Love  as  a  Sacrament 
of  Nature — The  Idea  of  the  Impurity  of  Sex  in  Primitive  Religions 
Generally — Theories  of  the  Origin  of  This  Idea. — The  Anti-Ascetic  Ele- 
ment in  the  Bible  and  Early  Christianity — Clement  of  Alexandria — St. 
lugustine's  Attitude — The  Recognition  of  the  Sacredness  of  the  Body 
jy  Tertullian,  Rufinus  and  Athanasius — The  Reformation — The  Sexual 
Instinct  regarded  as  Beastly — The  Human  Sexual  Instinct  Not  Animal- 
like— Lust  and  Love — The  Definition  of  Love — Love  and  Names  for  Love 
Unknown  in  Some  Parts  of  the  World — Romantic  Love  of  Late  Develop- 
ment in  the  White  Race — The  Mystery  of  Sexual  Desire — Whether  Love 
is  a  Delusion — The  Spiritual  as  Well  as  the  Physical  Structure  of  the 
World  in  Part  Built  up  on  Sexual  Love — The  Testimony  of  Men  of 
Intellect  to  the  Supremacy  of  Love. 

It  will  be  seen  that  the  preceding  discussion  of  nakedness 
has  a  significance  beyond  what  it  appeared  to  possess  at  the  out- 
set. The  hygienic  value,  physically  and  mentally,  of  familiarity 
with  nakedness  during  the  early  years  of  life,  however  con- 
siderable it  may  be,  is  not  the  only  value  which  such  familiarity 
possesses.  Beyond  its  aesthetic  value,  also,  there  lies  in  it  a  moral 
value,  a  source  of  djmamic  energy.  And  now,  taking  a  still 
further  step,  we  may  say  that  it  has  a  spiritual  value  in  relation 
to  our  whole  conception  of  the  sexual  impulse.  Our  attitude 
towards  the  naked  human  body  is  the  test  of  our  attitude  towards 
the  instinct  of  sex.  If  our  own  and  our  fellows'  bodies  seem  to 
us  intrinsically  shameful  or  disgusting,  nothing  will  ever  really 
ennoble  or  purify  our  conceptions  of  sexual  love.  Love  craves 
the  flesh,  and  if  the  flesh  is  shameful  the  lover  must  be  shameful. 
"Se  la  cosa  amata  e  vile,"  as  Leonardo  da  Vinci  profoundly 
said,  "Famante  se  fa  vile."  However  illogical  it  may  have  been, 
there  really  was  a  justification  for  the  old  Christian  identification 
of  the  flesh  with  the  sexual  instinct.  They  stand  or  fall 
(118) 


THE  VALUATION  OF  SEXUAL  LOTE.  119 

together;  we  cannot  degrade  the  one  and  exalt  the  other.  As 
onr  feelings  towards  nakedness  are,  so  will  be  our  feelings  towards 
love. 

"Man  is  nothing  else  than  fetid  sperm,  a  sack  of  dung,  the 
food  of  worms.  .  .  .  You  have  never  seen  a  viler  dung-hill." 
Such  was  the  outcome  of  St.  Bernard's  cloistered  Meditationes 
Piissimce.1  Sometimes,  indeed,  these  mediaeval  monks  would 
admit  that  the  skin  possessed  a  certain  superficial  beauty,  but 
they  only  made  that  admission  in  order  to  emphasize  the  hideous- 
ness  of  the  body  when  deprived  of  this  film  of  loveliness,  and 
strained  all  their  perverse  intellectual  acumen,  and  their 
ferocious  irony,  as  they  eagerly  pointed  the  finger  of  mockery  at 
every  detail  of  what  seemed  to  them  the  pitiful  figure  of  man.  St. 
Odo  of  Cluny — charming  saint  as  he  was  and  a  pioneer  in  his 
appreciation  of  the  wild  beauty  of  the  Alps  he  had  often 
traversed — was  yet  an  adept  in  this  art  of  reviling  the  beauty  of 
the  human  body.  That  beauty  only  lies  in  the  skin,  he  insists; 
if  we  could  see  beneath  the  skin  women  would  arouse  nothing 
but  nausea.  Their  adornments  are  but  blood  and  mucus  and 
bile.  If  we  refuse  to  touch  dung  and  phlegm  even  with  a  finger- 
tip, how  can  we  desire  to  embrace  a  sack  of  dung?2  The 
mediaeval  monks  of  the  more  contemplative  order,  indeed,  often 
found  here  a  delectable  field  of  meditation,  and  the  Christian 
world  generally  was  content  to  accept  their  opinions  in  more  or 
less  diluted  versions,  or  at  all  events  never  made  any  definite 
protest  against  them. 


i  Meditationes  Piisimw  de  Cognitione  Eumance  Conditionis,  Migne's 
Patrologia,  vol.  clxxiv,  p.  489,  cap.  Ill,  "De  Dignitate  AnimaB  et  Vilitate 
Corporis."  It  may  be  worth  while  to  quote  more  at  length  the  vigorous 
language  of  the  original.  "Si  diligenter  consideres  quid  per  os  et  nares 
cseterosque   corporis   meatus   egrediatur,   vilius    sterquilinum   numquam 

vidisti Attende,  homo,  quid  fuisti  ante  ortum,  et  quid  es  ab 

ortu  usque  ad  occasum,  atque  quid  eris  post  hanc  vitam.  Profecto  fuit 
quand  non  eras:  postea  de  vili  materia  factus,  et  vilissimo  panno 
involutus,  menstruali  sanguine  in  utero  materno  fuisti  nutritus,  et 
tunica  tua  fuit  pellis  secundina.     Nihil   aliud  est  homo  quam   sperma 

fetidum,   saccus   stercorum,   cibus   vermium Quid    superbis, 

pulvis  et  cinis,  cujus  conceptus  cula,  nasci  miseria,  vivere  poena,  mori 
angustia?" 

2  See  (in  Mignes'  edition)  S.  Odonis  abhaiis  Cluniacensis  Colla- 
tiones,  lib.  ii,  cap.  IX. 


120  PSYCHOLOGY    OF   SEX. 

Even  men  of  science  accepted  these  conceptions  and  are, 
indeed,  only  now  beginning  to  emancipate  themselves  from  such 
ancient  superstitions.  E.  de  Graef  in  the  Preface  to  his  famous 
treatise  on  the  generative  organs  of  women,  De  Mvlierum  Organis 
Generatione  Inservientibus,  dedicated  to  Cosmo  III  de  Medici  in 
1672,  considered  it  necessary  to  apologize  for  the  subject  of  his 
work.  Even  a  century  later,  Linnaeus  in  his  great  work,  The 
System  of  Nature,  dismissed  as  "abominable"  the  exact  study 
of  the  female  genitals,  although  he  admitted  the  scientific 
interest  of  such  investigations.  And  if  men  of  science  have 
found  it  difficult  to  attain  an  objective  vision  of  women  we 
cannot  be  surprised  that  mediaeval  and  still  more  ancient 
conceptions  have  often  been  subtly  mingled  with  the  views  of 
philosophical  and  semi-philosophical  writers.1 

"We  may  regard  as  a  special  variety  of  the  ascetic  view  of 
sex, — for  the  ascetics,  as  we  see,  freely  but  not  quite  legitimately, 
based  their  asceticism  largely  on  aesthetic  considerations, — that 
insistence  on  the  proximity  of  the  sexual  to  the  excretory  centres 
which  found  expression  in  the  early  Church  in  Augustine's 
depreciatory  assertion:  "Inter  faeces  et  urinam  nascimur,"  and 
still  persists  among  many  who  by  no  means  always  associate  it 
with  religious  asceticism.2  "As  a  result  of  what  ridiculous 
economy,  and  of  what  Mephistophilian  irony/'  asks  Tarde,3 
"Tias  Nature  imagined  that  a  function  so  lofty,  so  worthy  of  the 
poetic  and  philosophical  hymns  which  have  celebrated  it,  only 
deserved  to  have  its  exclusive  organ  shared  with  that  of  the  vilest 
corporal  functions?" 

It  may,  however,  be  pointed  out  that  this  view  of  the  matter, 
however  unconsciously,  is  itself  the  outcome  of  the  ascetic  depre- 
ciation  of   the   body.     From   a   scientific   point   of   view,    the 


1  Diihren  (Neue  ForsJiungen  iiber  die  Marquis  de  Bade,  pp.  432  et 
seq. )  shows  how  the  ascetic  view  of  woman's  body  persisted,  for  instance, 
in  Schopenhauer  and  De  Sade. 

2  In  "The  Evolution  of  Modesty,"  in  the  first  volume  of  these 
Studies,  and  again  in  the  fifth  volume  in  discussing  urolagnia  in  the 
study  of  "Erotic  Symbolism,''  the  mutual  reactions  of  the  sexual  and 
excretory  centres  were  fully  dealt  with. 

3  "La  Morale  Sexuelle,"  Archives  a" 'Anthropologic  Criminelle,  Jan., 
1907. 


THE  VALUATION  OF  SEXUAL  LOVE.  121 

metabolic  processes  of  the  body  from  one  end  to  the  other, 
whether  regarded  chemically  or  psychologically,  are  all  inter- 
woven and  all  of  equal  dignity.  We  cannot  separate  out  any 
particular  chemical  or  biological  process  and  declare:  This  is 
vile.  Even  what  we  call  excrement  still  stores  up  the  stuff  of  our 
lives.  Eating  has  to  some  persons  seemed  a  disgusting  process. 
But  yet  it  has  been  possible  to  say,  with  Thoreau,  that  "the  gods 
have  really  intended  that  men  should  feed  divinely,  as  themselves, 
on  their  own  nectar  and  ambrosia.  ...  I  have  felt  that 
eating  became  a  sacrament,  a  method  of  communion,  an  ecstatic 
exercise,  and  a  sitting  at  the  communion  table  of  the  world." 

The  sacraments  of  Nature  are  in  this  way  everywhere  woven 
into  the  texture  of  men's  and  women's  bodies.  Lips  good  to  kiss 
with  are  indeed  first  of  all  chiefly  good  to  eat  and  drink  with. 
So  accumulated  and  overlapped  have  the  centres  of  force  become 
in  the  long  course  of  development,  that  the  mucous  membranes 
of  the  natural  orifices,  through  the  sensitiveness  gained  in  their 
own  offices,  all  become  agents  to  thrill  the  soul  in  the  contact 
of  love ;  it  is  idle  to  discriminate  high  or  low,  pure  or  impure ;  all 
alike  are  sanctified  already  by  the  extreme  unction  of  Nature. 
The  nose  receives  the  breath  of  life;  the  vagina  receives  the 
water  of  life.  Ultimately  the  worth  and  loveliness  of  life  must 
be  measured  by  the  worth  and  loveliness  for  us  of  the  instruments 
of  life.  The  swelling  breasts  are  such  divinely  gracious  insignia 
of  womanhood  because  of  the  potential  child  that  hangs  at  them 
and  sucks ;  the  large  curves  of  the  hips  are  so  voluptuous  because 
of  the  potential  child  they  clasp  within  them;  there  can  be  no 
division  here,  we  cannot  cut  the  roots  from  the  tree.  The 
supreme  function  of  manhood — the  handing  on  of  the  lamp  of 
life  to  future  races — is  carried  on,  it  is  true,  by  the  same  instru- 
ment that  is  the  daily  conduit  of  the  bladder.  It  has  been  said 
in  scorn  that  we  are  born  between  urine  and  excrement;  it 
may  be  said,  in  reverence,  that  the  passage  through  this  channel  of 
birth  is  a  sacrament  of  Nature's  more  sacred  and  significant  than 
men  could  ever  invent. 

These  relationships  have  been  sometimes  perceived  and  their 
meaning  realized  by  a  sort  of  mystical  intuition.     We  catch 


122  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   SEX. 

glimpses  of  such  an  insight  now  and  again,  first  among  the  poets 
and  later  among  the  physicians  of  the  Benaissance.  In  1664 
Bolfincius,  in  his  Ordo  et  Metliodus  Generationi  Partium  etc.,  at 
the  outset  of  the  second  Part  devoted  to  the  sexual  organs  of 
women,  sets  forth  what  ancient  writers  have  said  of  the  Eleusinian 
and  other  mysteries  and  the  devotion  and  purity  demanded  of 
those  who  approached  these  sacred  rites.  It  is  so  also  with  us,  he 
continues,  in  the  rites  of  scientific  investigation.  "We  also  operate 
with  sacred  things.  The  organs  of  sex  are  to  be  held  among 
sacred  things.  They  who  approach  these  altars  must  come  with 
devout  minds.  Let  the  profane  stand  without,  and  the  doors  be 
closed."  In  those  days,  even  for  science,  faith  and  intuition  were 
alone  possible.  It  is  only  of  recent  years  that  the  histologist's 
microscope  and  the  physiological  chemist's  test-tube  have  fur- 
nished them  with  a  rational  basis.  It  is  no  longer  possible  to 
cut  Nature  in  two  and  assert  that  here  she  is  pure  and  there 
impure.1  ' 

There  thus  appears  to  be  no  adequate  ground  for  agreeing  with 
those  who  consider  that  the  proximity  of  the  generative  and  excretory 
centres  is  "a  stupid  bungle  of  Nature's."  An  association  which  is  so 
ancient  and  primitive  in  Nature  can  only  seem  repulsive  to  those  whose 
feelings  have  become  morbidly  unnatural.  It  may  further  be  remarked 
that  the  anus,  which  is  the  more  aesthetically  unattractive  of  the  excre- 
tory centres,  is  comparatively  remote  from  the  sexual  c  mtre,  and  that, 
as  R.  Hellmann  remarked  many  years  ago  in  discussing  this  question 
(Ueier  GeschlecJvtsfreiheit,  p.  82)  :  "In  the  first  place,  freshly  viided 
urine  has  nothing  specially  unpleasant  about  it,  and  in  the  second  place, 
even  if  it  had,  we  might  reflect  that  a  rosy  mouth  by  no  means  loses  its 
charm  merely  because  it  fails  to  invite  a  kiss  at  the  moment  when  its 
possessor  is  vomiting." 

A  clergyman  writes  suggesting  that  we  may  go  further  and  find  a 
positive  advantage  in  this  proximity :  "I  am  glad  that  you  do  not  agree 
with  the  man  who  considered  that  Nature  had  bungled  by  using  the 
genitals  for  urinary  purposes;  apart  from  teleological  or  theological 
grounds  I  could  not  follow  that  line  of  reasoning.  I  think  there  is  no 
need  for  disgust  concerning  the  urinary  organs,  though  I  feel  that  the- 


l  The  above  passage,  now  slightly  modified,  originally  formed  an 
unpublished  part  of  an  essay  on  Walt  Whitman  in  The  Neio  Spirit,  first 
issued  in  1889. 


THE    VALUATION    OF    SEXUAL   LOVE.  123 

anus  can  never  be  attractive  to  the  normal  mind;  but  the  anus  is  quite 
separate  from  the  genitals.  I  would  suggest  that  the  proximity  serves 
a  good  end  in  making  the  organs  more  or  less  secret  except  at  times  of 
sexual  emotion  or  to  those  in  love.  The  result  is  some  degree  of  repul- 
sion at  ordinary  times  and  a  strong  attraction  at  times  of  sexual 
activity.  Hence,  the  ordinary  guarding  of  the  parts,  from  fear  of  creat- 
ing disgust,  greatly  increases  their  attractiveness  at  other  times  when 
sexiial  emotion  is  paramount.  Further,  the  feeling  of  disgust  itself  is 
merely  the  result  of  habit  and  sentiment,  however  useful  it  may  be,  and 
according  to  Scripture  everything  is  clean  and  good.  The  ascetic  feeling 
of  repulsion,  if  we  go  back  to  origin,  is  due  to  other  than  Christian 
influence.  Christianity  came  out  of  Judaism  which  had  no  sense  of  the 
impurity  of  marriage,  for  'unclean'  in  the  Old  Testament  simply  means 
'sacred.'  The  ascetic  side  of  the  religion  of  Christianity  is  no  part  of 
the  religion  of  Christ  as  it  came  from  the  hands  of  its  Founder,  and 
the  modern  feeling  on  this  matter  is  a  lingering  remnant  of  the  heresy 
of  the  Manichssans."  I  may  add,  however,  that,  as  Northcote  points 
out  {Christianity  and  Sex  Problems,  p.  14),  side  by  side  in  the  Old 
Testament  with  the  frank  recognition  of  sexuality,  there  is  a  circle  of 
ideas  revealing  the  feeling  of  impurity  in  sex  and  of  shame  in  connec- 
tion with  it.  Christianity  inherited  this  mixed  feeling.  It  has  really 
been  a  widespread  and  almost  universal  feeling  among  the  ancient  and 
primitive  peoples  that  there  is  something  impure  and  sinful  in  the  things 
of  sex,  so  that  those  who  would  lead  a  religious  life  must  avoid  sexual 
relationships;  even  in  India  celibacy  has  commanded  respect  (see,  e.g., 
Westermarck,  Marriage,  pp.  150  et  seq.).  As  to  the  original  foundation 
of  this  notion — which  it  is  unnecessary  to  discuss  more  fully  here — 
many  theories  have  been  put  forward;  St.  Augustine,  in  his  De  Givitafe 
Dei,  sets  forth  the  ingenious  idea  that  the  penis,  being  liable  to  spon- 
taneous movements  and  erections  that  are  not  under  the  control  of  the 
will,  is  a  shameful  organ  and  involves  the  whole  sphere  of  sex  in  its 
shame.  Westermarck  argues  that  among  nearly  all  peoples  there  is  a 
feeling  against  sexual  relationship  with  members  of  the  same  family  or 
household,  and  as  sex  was  thus  banished  from  the  sphere  of  domestic 
life  a  notion  of  its  general  impurity  arose;  Northcote  points  out  that 
from  the  first  it  has  been  necessary  to  seek  concealment  for  sexual  inter- 
course, because  at  that  moment  the  couple  would  be  a  prey  to  hostile 
attacks,  and  that  it  was  by  an  easy  transition  that  sex  came  to  be 
regarded  as  a  thing  that  ought  to  be  concealed,  and,  therefore,  a  sinful 
thing.  (Diderot,  in  his  Supplement  au  Voyage  de  Bougainville,  had 
already  referred  to  this  motive  for  seclusion  as  "the  only  natural  ele- 
ment in  modesty.")  Crawley  has  devoted  a  large  part  of  his  suggestive 
work,  The  Mystic  Rose,  to  showing  that,  to  savage  man,  sex  is  a  perilous, 
dangerous,  and  enfeebling  element  in  life,  and,  therefore,  sinful. 


124  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   SEX. 

It  would,  however,  be  a  mistake  to  think  that  such  men  as 
St.  Bernard  and  St.  Odo  of  Cluny,  admirably  as  they  represented 
the  ascetic  and  even  the  general  Christian  views  of  their  own 
time,  are  to  be  regarded  as  altogether  typical  exponents  of  the 
genuine  and  primitive  Christian  view.  So  far  as  I  have  been 
able  to  discover,  during  the  first  thousand  years  of  Christianity 
we  do  not  find  this  concentrated  intellectual  and  emotional 
ferocity  of  attack  on  the  body ;  it  only  developed  at  the  moment 
when,  with  Pope  Gregory  VII,  mediaeval  Christianity  reached  the 
climax  of  its  conquest  over  the  souls  of  European  men,  in  the 
establishment  of  the  celibacy  of  the  secular  clergy,  and  the  growth 
of  the  great  cloistered  communities  of  monks  in  severely  regulated 
and  secluded  orders.1  Before  that  the  teachers  of  asceticism 
were  more  concerned  to  exhort  to  chastity  and  modesty  than  to 
direct  a  deliberate  and  systematic  attack  on  the  whole  body;  they 
concentrated  their  attention  rather  on  spiritual  virtues  than  on 
physical  imperfections.  And  if  we  go  back  to  the  Gospels  we 
find  little  of  the  mediaeval  ascetic  spirit  in  the  reported  sayings 
and  doings  of  Jesus,  which  may  rather  indeed  be  said  to  reveal, 
on  the  whole,  notwithstanding  their  underlying  asceticism,  a 
certain  tenderness  and  indulgence  to  the  body,  while  even  Paul, 
though  not  tender  towards  the  body,  exhorts  to  reverence  towards 
it  as  a  temple  of  the  Holy  Spirit. 

We  cannot  expect  to  find  the  Fathers  of  the  Church  sympa- 
thetic towards  the  spectacle  of  the  naked  human  body,  for  their 
position  was  based  on  a  revolt  against  paganism,  and  paganism 
had  cultivated  the  body.  Nakedness  had  been  more  especially 
associated  with  the  public  bath,  the  g3;rmnasium,  and  the  theatre ; 
in  profoundly  disapproving  of  these  pagan  institutions  Christi- 


l  Even  in  the  ninth  century,  however,  when  the  monastic  movement 
was  rapidly  developing,  there  were  some  who  withstood  the  tendencies 
of  the  new  ascetics.  Thus,  in  850,  Ratramnus,  the  monk  of  Corbie, 
wrote  a  treatise  (Liber  de  eo  quod  Ghristus  ex  Virgine  natus  est)  to 
prove  that  Mary  really  gave  birth  to  Jesus  through  her  sexual  organs, 
and  not,  as  some  high-strung  persons  were  beginning  to  think  could 
alone  be  possible,  through  the  more  conventionally  decent  breasts.  The 
sexual  organs  were  sanctified.  "Spiritus  sanctus  .  .  .  .  et  thala- 
mum  tanto  dignum  sponso  sanctificavit  et  portam"  (Achery,  Spicilegium, 
vol.  i,  p.  55). 


THE  VALUATION  OF  SEXUAL  LOVE.  125 

anity  discouraged  nakedness.  The  fact  that  familiarity  with 
nakedness  was  favorable,  rather  than  opposed,  to  the  chastity  to 
which  it  attached  so  much  importance,  the  Church — though 
indeed  at  one  moment  it  accepted  nakedness  in  the  rite  of  bap- 
tism— was  for  the  most  part  unable  to  see  if  it  was  indeed  a  fact 
which  the  special  conditions  of  decadent  classic  life  had  tended 
to  disguise.  But  in  their  decided  preference  for  the  dressed  over 
the  naked  human  body  the  early  Christians  frequently  hesitated 
to  take  the  further  step  of  asserting  that  the  body  is  a  focus  of 
impurity  and  that  the  physical  organs  of  sex  are  a  device  of  the 
devil.  On  the  contrary,  indeed,  some  of  the  most  distinguished 
of  the  Fathers,  especially  those  of  the  Eastern  Church  who  had 
felt  the  vivifying  breath  of  Greek  thought,  occasionally  expressed 
themselves  on  the  subject  of  Nature,  sex,  and  the  body  in  a 
spirit  which  would  have  won  the  approval  of  Goethe  or  Whitman. 

Clement  of  Alexandria,  with  all  the  eccentricities  of  his  over- 
subtle  intellect,  was  yet  the  most  genuinely  Greek  of  all  the 
Fathers,  and  it  is  not  surprising  that  the  dying  ray  of  classic  light 
reflected  from  his  mind  shed  some  illumination  over  this  question 
of  sex.  He  protested,  for  instance,  against  that  prudery  which, 
as  the  sun  of  the  classic  world  set,  had  begun  to  overshadow  life. 
"We  should  not  be  ashamed  to  name,"  he  declared,  "what  God 
has  not  been  ashamed  to  create."1  It  was  a  memorable  declara- 
tion because,  while  it  accepted  the  old  classic  feeling  of  no  shame 
in  the  presence  of  nature,  it  put  that  feeling  on  a  new  and 
religious  basis  harmonious  to  Christianity.  Throughout,  though 
not  always  quite  consistently,  Clement  defends  the  body  and  the 
functions  of  sex  against  those  who  treated  them  with  contempt. 
And  as  the  cause  of  sex  is  the  cause  of  women  he  always  strongly 
asserts  the  dignity  of  women,  and  also  proclaims  the  holiness  of 
marriage,  a  state  which  he  sometimes  places  above  that  of 
virginity.2 

Unfortunately,   it  must  be   said,    St.    Augustine — another 

1  Pcedagogus,  lib.  ii,  cap.  X.  Elsewhere  ( id.,  lib.  ii,  Ch.  VI )  he 
makes  a  more  detailed  statement  to  the  same  effect. 

2  See,  e.g.,  Wilhelm  Capitaine,  Die  Moral  des  Clemens  von  Alex- 
andrien,  pp.  112  et  seq. 


126  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

North  African,  but  of  Boman  Carthage  and  not  of  Greek  Alex« 
andria — thought  that  he  had  a  convincing  answer  to  the  kind  of 
argument  which  Clement  presented,  and  so  great  was  the  force 
of  his  passionate  and  potent  genius  that  he  was  able  in  the  end  to 
make  his  answer  prevail.  For  Augustine  sin  was  hereditary,  and 
sin  had  its  special  seat  and  symbol  in  the  sexual  organs ;  the  fact 
of  sin  has  modified  the  original  divine  act  of  creation,  and  we  can- 
not treat  sex  and  its  organs  as  though  there  had  been  no  inherited 
sin.  Our  sexual  organs,  he  declares,  have  become  shameful  be- 
cause, through  sin,  they  are  now  moved  by  lust.  At  the  same  time 
Augustine  by  no  means  takes  up  the  mediaeval  ascetic  position  of 
contemptuous  hatred  towards  the  body.  Nothing  can  be  further 
from  Odo  of  Cluny  than  Augustine's  enthusiasm  about  the  body, 
even  about  the  exquisite  harmony  of  the  parts  beneath  the  skin. 
"I  believe  it  may  be  concluded,"  he  even  says,  "that  in  the  cre- 
ation of  the  human  body  beauty  was  more  regarded  than 
necessity.  In  truth,  necessity  is  a  transitory  thing,  and  the  time 
is  coming  when  we  shall  be  able  to  enjoy  one  another's  beauty 
without  any  lust."1  Even  in  the  sphere  of  sex  he  would  be 
willing  to  admit  purity  and  beauty,  apart  from  the  inherited 
influence  of  Adam's  sin.  In  Paradise,  he  says,  had  Paradise  con- 
tinued, the  act  of  generation  would  have  been  as  simple  and  free 
from  shame  as  the  act  of  the  hand  in  scattering  seed  on  to  the 
earth.  "Sexual  conjugation  would  have  been  under  the  control 
of  the  will  without  any  sexual  desire.  The  semen  would  be  in- 
jected into  the  vagina  in  as  simple  a  manner  as  the  menstrual 
fluid  is  now  ejected.  There  would  not  have  been  any  words 
which  could  be  called  obscene,  but  all  that  might  be  said  of  these 
members  would  have  been  as  pure  as  what  is  said  of  the  other 
parts  of  the  body."2     That,  however,  for  Augustine,  is  what 


i  De  Civitate  Dei,  lib.  xxii,  cap.  XXIV.  "There  is  no  need,"  he 
says  again  (id.,  lib.  xiv,  cap.  V)  "that  in  our  sins  and  vices  we  accuse 
the  nature  of  the  flesh  to  the  injury  of  the  Creator,  for  in  its  own  kind 
and  degree  the  flesh  is  good." 

2  St.  Augustine,  De  Civitate  Dei,  lib.  xiv,  cap.  XXTII-XXVI. 
Chrysostom  and  Gregory,  of  Nyssa,  thought  that  in  Paradise  human 
beings  would  have  multiplied  by  special  creation,  but  such  is  not  the 
accepted  Catholic  doctrine. 


THE  VALUATION  OF  SEXUAL  LOVE.  127 

miglit  have  been  in  Paradise  where,  as  he  believed,  sexual  desire 
had  no  existence.  As  things  are,  he  held,  we  are  right  to  be 
ashamed,  we  do  well  to  blush.  And  it  was  natural  that,  as 
Clement  of  Alexandria  mentions,  many  heretics  should  have  gone 
further  on  this  road  and  believed  that  while  God  made  man  down 
to  the  navel,  the  rest  was  made  by  another  power ;  such  heretics 
have  their  descendants  among  us  even  to-day. 

Alike  in  the  Eastern  and  Western  Churches,  however,  both 
before  and  after  Augustine,  though  not  so  often  after,  great 
Fathers  and  teachers  have  uttered  opinions  which  recall  those 
of  Clement  rather  than  of  Augustine.  We  cannot  lay  very  much 
weight  on  the  utterance  of  the  extravagant  and  often  contradic- 
tory Tertullian,  but  it  is  worth  noting  that,  while  he  declared 
that  woman  is  the  gate  of  hell,  he  also  said  that  we  must  approach 
Nature  with  reverence  and  not  with  blushes.  "Natura  veneranda 
est,  non  erubescenda."  "No  Christian  author/'  it  has  indeed 
been  said,  "has  so  energetically  spoken  against  the  heretical  con- 
tempt of  the  body  as  Tertullian.  Soul  and  body,  according  to 
Tertullian,  are  in  the  closest  association.  The  soul  is  the  life- 
principle  of  the  body,  but  there  is  no  activity  of  the  soul  which  is 
not  manifested  and  conditioned  by  the  flesh/'1  More  weight 
attaches  to  Eufinus  Tyrannius,  the  friend  and  fellow-student  of 
St.  Jerome,  in  the  fourth  century,  who  wrote  a  commentary  on 
the  Apostles'  Creed,  which  was  greatly  esteemed  by  the  early  and 
mediaeval  Church,  and  is  indeed  still  valued  even  to-day.  Here, 
in  answer  to  those  who  declared  that  there  was  obscenity  in  the 
fact  of  Christ's  birth  through  the  sexual  organs  of  a  woman, 
Eufinus  replies  that  God  created  the  sexual  organs,  and  that  "it 
is  not  Nature  but  merely  human  opinion  which  teaches  that  these 
parts  are  obscene.  For  the  rest,  all  the  parts  of  the  body  are 
made  from  the  same  clay,  whatever  differences  there  may  be  in 
their  uses  and  functions."2    He  looks  at  the  matter,  we  see,  piously 


1  W.  Capitaine,  Die  Moral  des  Clemens  von  Alexandrien,  pp.  112  el 
seq.  Without  the  body,  Tertullian  declared,  there  could  be  no  virginity 
and  no  salvation.  The  soul  itself  is  corporeal.  He  carries,  indeed,  hia 
idea  of  the  omnipresence  of  the  body  to  the  absurd. 

2E.ufinus,  Commentarius  in  Symbolum  Apostolorum,  cap.  XII. 


128  PSYCHOLOGY   OF    SEX. 

indeed,  but  naturally  and  simply,  like  Clement,  and  not,  like 
Augustine,  through  the  distorting  medium  of  a  theological  sys- 
tem. Athanasius,  in  the  Eastern  Church,  spoke  in  the  same  sense 
as  Eufinus  in  the  Western  Church.  A  certain  monk  named 
Amun  had  been  much  grieved  by  the  occurrence  of  seminal  emis- 
sions during  sleep,  and  he  wrote  to  Athanasius  to  inquire  if  such 
emissions  are  a  sin.  In  the  letter  he  wrote  in  reply,  Athanasius 
seeks  to  reassure  Amun.  "All  things/'  he  tells  him,  "are  pure 
to  the  pure.  For  what,  I  ask,  dear  and  pious  friend,  can  there 
be  sinful  or  naturally  impure  in  excrement?  Man  is  the  hand- 
work of  God.  There  is  certainly  nothing  in  us  that  is  impure."1 
We  feel  as  we  read  these  utterances  that  the  seeds  of  prudery  and 
pruriency  are  already  alive  in  the  popular  mind,  but  yet  we  see 
also  that  some  of  the  most  distinguished  thinkers  of  the  early 
Christian  Church,  in  striking  contrast  to  the  more  morbid  and 
narrow-minded  mediaeval  ascetics,  clearly  stood  aside  from  the 
popular  movement.  On  the  whole,  they  were  submerged  because 
Christianity,  like  Buddhism,  had  in  it  from  the  first  a  germ  that 
lent  itself  to  ascetic  renunciation,  and  the  sexual  life  is  always  the 
first  impulse  to  be  sacrificed  to  the  passion  for  renunciation.  But 
there  were  other  germs  also  in  Christianity,  and  Luther,  who  in 
his  own  plebeian  way  asserted  the  rights  of  the  body,  although  he 
broke  with  mediaeval  asceticism,  by  no  means  thereby  cast  him- 
self off  from  the  traditions  of  the  early  Christian  Church. 

I  have  thought  it  worth  while  to  bring  forward  this  evidence, 
although  I  am  perfectly  well  aware  that  the  facts  of  Nature  gain 
no  additional  support  from  the  authority  of  the  Fathers  or  even 
of  the  Bible.  Nature  and  humanity  existed  before  the  Bible  and 
would  continue  to  exist  although  the  Bible  should  be  forgotten. 
But  the  attitude  of  Christianity  on  this  point  has  so  often  been 
unreservedly  condemned  that  it  seems  as  well  to  point  out  that 
at  its  finest  moments,  when  it  was  a  young  and  growing  power  in 
the  world,  the  utterances  of  Christianity  were  often  at  one  with 
those  of  Nature  and  reason.  There  are  many,  it  may  be  added, 
who  find  it  a  matter  of  consolation  that  in  following  the  natural 


1  Migne,  Patrologia  Grceca,  vol.  xxvi,  pp.  1170  et  seq. 


THE  VALUATION  OF  SEXUAL  LOVE.  129 

and  rational  path  in  this  matter  they  are  not  thereby  altogether 
breaking  with  the  religious  traditions  of  their  race. 

It  is  scarcely  necessary  to  remark  that  when  we  turn  from  Chris- 
tianity to  the  other  great  world-religions,  we  do  not  usually  meet  with 
so  ambiguous  an  attitude  towards  sex.  The  Mahommedans  were  as 
emphatic  in  asserting  the  sanctity  of  sex  as  they  were  in  asserting 
physical  cleanliness;  they  were  prepared  to  carry  the  functions  of  sex 
into  the  future  life,  and  were  never  worried,  as  Luther  and  so  many 
other  Christians  have  been,  concerning  the  lack  of  occupation  in  Heaven. 
In  India,  although  India  is  the  home  of  the  most  extreme  forms  of 
religious  asceticism,  sexual  love  has  been  sanctified  and  divinized  to  a 
greater  extent  than  in  any  other  part  of  the  world.  "It  seems  never  to 
have  entered  into  the  heads  of  the  Hindu  legislators,"  said  Sir  William 
Jones  long  since  (Works,  vol.  ii,  p.  311),  "that  anything  natural  could 
be  offensively  obscene,  a  singularity  which  pervades  all  their  writings, 
but  is  no  proof  of  the  depravity  of  their  morals."  The  sexual  act  has 
often  had  a  religious  significance  in  India,  and  the  minutest  details  of 
the  sexual  life  and  its  variations  are  discussed  in  Indian  erotic  treatises 
in  a  spirit  of  gravity,  while  nowhere  else  have  the  anatomical  and  phy- 
siological sexual  characters  of  women  been  studied  with  such  minute  and 
adoring  reverence.  "Love  in  India,  both  as  regards  theory  and  practice," 
remarks  Richard  Schmidt  {Beitrage  zur  Indischen  Erotik,  p.  2)  "pos- 
sesses an  importance  which  it  is  impossible  for  us  even  to  conceive." 

In  Protestant  countries  the  influence  of  the  Kef  ormation,  by 
rehabilitating  sex  as  natural,  indirectly  tended  to  substitute  in 
popular  feeling  towards  sex  the  opprobrium  of  sinfulness  by  the 
opprobrium  of  animality.  Henceforth  the  sexual  impulse  must 
be  disguised  or  adorned  to  become  respectably  human.  This  may 
be  illustrated  by  a  passage  in  Pepys's  Diary  in  the  seventeenth 
century.  On  the  morning  after  the  wedding  day  it  was  cus- 
tomary to  call  up  new  married  couples  by  music ;  the  absence  of 
this  music  on  one  occasion  (in  1667)  seemed  to  Pepys  "as  if  they 
had  married  like  dog  and  bitch."  We  no  longer  insist  on  the 
music,  but  the  same  feeling  still  exists  in  the  craving  for  other 
disguises  and  adornments  for  the  sexual  impulse.  We  do  not 
always  realize  that  love  brings  its  own  sanctity  with  it. 

Nowadays  indeed,  whenever  the  repugnance  to  the  sexual 

side  of  life  manifests  itself,  the  assertion  nearly  always  made  is 

9 


130  PSYCHOLOGY    OF   SEX. 

not  so  much  that  it  is  "sinful"  as  that  it  is  "beastly."  It  is 
regarded  as  that  part  of  man  which  most  closely  allies  him  to  the 
lower  animals.  It  should  scarcely  he  necessary  to  point  out  that 
this  is  a  mistake.  On  whichever  side,  indeed,  we  approach  it,  the 
implication  that  sex  in  man  and  animals  is  identical  cannot  be 
borne  out.  From  the  point  of  view  of  those  who  accept  this 
identity  it  would  be  much  more  correct  to  say  that  men  are 
inferior,  rather  than  on  a  level  with  animals,  for  in  animals  under 
natural  conditions  the  sexual  instinct  is  strictly  subordinated  to 
reproduction  and  very  little  susceptible  to  deviation,  so  that  from 
the  standpoint  of  those  who  wish  to  minimize  sex,  animals  are 
nearer  to  the  ideal,  and  such  persons  must  say  with  Woods  Hutch- 
inson: "Take  it  altogether,  our  animal  ancestors  have  quite  as 
good  reason  to  be  ashamed  of  us  as  we  of  them."  But  if  we  look 
at  the  matter  from  a  wider  biological  standpoint  of  development, 
our  conclusion  must  be  very  different. 

So  far  from  being  animal-like,  the  human  impulses  of  sex 
are  among  the  least  animal-like  acquisitions  of  man.  The  human 
sphere  of  sex  differs  from  the  animal  sphere  of  sex  to  a  singularly 
great  extent.1  Breathing  is  an  animal  function  and  here  we  can- 
not compete  with  birds;  locomotion  is  an  animal  function  and 
here  we  cannot  equal  quadrupeds;  we  have  made  no  notable  ad- 
vance in  our  circulatory,  digestive,  renal,  or  hepatic  functions. 
Even  as  regards  vision  and  hearing,  there  are  many  animals  that 
are  more  keen-sighted  than  man,  and  many  that  are  capable  of 
hearing  sounds  that  to  him  are  inaudible.  But  there  are  no 
animals  in  whom  the  sexual  instinct  is  so  sensitive,  so  highly 
developed,  so  varied  in  its  manifestations,  so  constantly  alert,  so 
capable  of  irradiating  the  highest  and  remotest  parts  of  the 
organism.  The  sexual  activities  of  man  and  woman  belong  not 
to  that  lower  part  of  our  nature  which  degrades  us  to  the  level  of 
the  "brute,"  but  to  the  higher  part  which  raises  us  towards  all 
the  finest  activities  and  ideals  we  are  capable  of.  It  is  true  that 
it  is  chiefly  in  the  mouths  of  a  few  ignorant  and  ill-bred  women 


i  Even  in  physical  conformation  the  human  sexual  organs,  when 
compared  with  those  of  the  lower  animals,  show  marked  differences  (see 
"The  Mechanism  of  Detumescence,"  in  the  fifth  volume  of  these  Studies). 


THE  VALUATION  OF  SEXUAL  LOVE.  131 

that  we  find  sex  referred  to  as  "bestial"  or  "the  animal  part  of 
our  nature."1  But  since  women  are  the  mothers  and  teachers  of 
the  human  race  this  is  a  piece  of  ignorance  and  ill-breeding  which 
cannot  be  too  swiftly  eradicated. 

There  are  some  who  seem  to  think  that  they  have  held  the 
balance  evenly,  and  finally  stated  the  matter,  if  they  admit  that 
sexual  love  may  be  either  beautiful  or  disgusting,  and  that  either 
view  is  equally  normal  and  legitimate.  "Listen  in  turn,"  Tarde 
remarks,  "to  two  men  who,  one  cold,  the  other  ardent,  one  chaste, 
the  other  in  love,  both  equally  educated  and  large-minded,  are 
estimating  the  same  thing:  one  judges  as  disgusting,  odious, 
revolting,  and  bestial  what  the  other  judges  to  be  delicious,  ex- 
quisite, ineffable,  divine.  What,  for  one,  is  in  Christian  phrase- 
ology, an  unforgivable  sin,  is,  for  the  other,  the  state  of  true 
grace.  Acts  that  for  one  seem  a  sad  and  occasional  necessity, 
stains  that  must  be  carefully  effaced  by  long  intervals  of  con- 
tinence, are  for  the  other  the  golden  nails  from  which  all  the 
rest  of  conduct  and  existence  is  suspended,  the  things  that  alone 
give  human  life  its  value."2  Yet  we  may  well  doubt  whether 
both  these  persons  are  "equally  well-educated  and  broad-minded." 
The  savage  feels  that  sex  is  perilous,  and  he  is  right.  But  the 
person  who  feels  that  the  sexual  impulse  is  bad,  or  even  low  and 
vulgar,  is  an  absurdity  in  the  universe,  an  anomaly.  He  is  like 
those  persons  in  our  insane  asylums,  who  feel  that  the  instinct 
of  nutrition  is  evil  and  so  proceed  to  starve  themselves.  They 
are  alike  spiritual  outcasts  in  the  universe  whose  children  they 
are.  It  is  another  matter  when  a  man  declares  that,  personally, 
in  his  own  case,  he  cherishes  an  ascetic  ideal  which  leads  him  to 
restrain,  so  far  as  possible,  either  or  both  impulses.  The  man 
who  is  sanely  ascetic  seeks  a  discipline  which  aids  the  ideal  he 
has  personally  set  before  himself.  He  may  still  remain  theoreti- 
cally in  harmony  with  the  universe  to  which  he  belongs.     But  to 


1  It  may  perhaps  be  as  well  to  point  out,  with  Forel  (Die  Sexuelle 
Frage,  p.  208 ) ,  that  the  word  "bestial"  is  generally  used  quite  incorrectly 
in  this  connection.  Indeed,  not  only  for  the  higher,  but  also  for  the 
lower  manifestation  of  the  sexual  impulse,  it  would  usually  be  more 
correct  to  use  instead  the  qualification  "human." 

2  Loo.  cit.,  Archives  d'Anthropologie  Criminelle,  Jan.,  1907. 


132  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   SEX. 

pour  contempt  on  the  sexual  life,  to  throw  the  veil  of  "impurity" 
over  it,  is,  as  Nietzsche  declared,  the  unpardonable  sin  against  the 
Holy  Ghost  of  Life. 

There  are  many  who  seek  to  concilate  prejudice  and  reason 
in  their  valuation  of  sex  by  drawing  a  sharp  distinction  between 
"lust"  and  "love,"  rejecting  the  one  and  accepting  the  other.  It 
is  quite  proper  to  make  such  a  distinction,  but  the  manner  in 
which  it  is  made  will  by  no  means  usually  bear  examination.  We 
have  to  define  what  we  mean  by  "lust"  and  what  we  mean  by 
"love,"  and  this  is  not  easy  if  they  are  regarded  as  mutually  ex- 
clusive. It  is  sometimes  said  that  "lust"  must  be  understood  as 
meaning  a  reckless  indulgence  of  the  sexual  impulse  without 
regard  to  other  considerations.  So  understood,  we  are  quite  safe 
in  rejecting  it.  But  that  is  an  entirely  arbitrary  definition  of  the 
word.  "Lust"  is  really  a  very  ambiguous  term ;  it  is  a  good  word 
that  has  changed  its  moral  values,  and  therefore  we  need  to  define 
it  very  carefully  before  we  venture  to  use  it.  Properly  speaking, 
"lust"  is  an  entirely  colorless  word1  and  merely  means  desire  in 
general  and  sexual  desire  in  particular;  it  corresponds  to 
"hunger"  or  "thirst" ;  to  use  it  in  an  offensive  sense  is  much  the 
same  as  though  we  should  always  assume  that  the  word  "hungry" 
had  the  offensive  meaning  of  "greedy."  The  result  has  been  that 
sensitive  minds  indignantly  reject  the  term  "lust"  in  con- 
nection with  love.2  In  the  early  use  of  our  language,  "lust," 
"lusty,"  and  "lustful"  conveyed  the  sense  of  wholesome  and 
normal  sexual  vigor;  now,  with  the  partial  exception  of  "lusty," 
they  have  been  so  completely  degraded  to  a  lower  sense  that 
although  it  would  be  very  convenient  to  restore  them  to  their 


1  It  has,  however,  become  colored  and  suspect  from  an  early  period 
in  the  history  of  Christianity.  St.  Augustine  (De  Civitate  Dei,  lib.  xiv, 
cap.  XV ) ,  while  admitting  that  libido  or  lust  is  merely  the  generic  name 
for  all  desire,  adds  that,  as  specially  applied  to  the  sexual  appetite,  it  is 
justly  and  properly  mixed  up  with  ideas  of  shame. 

2Hinton  well  illustrates  this  feeling.  "We  call  by  the  name  of 
lust,"  he  declares  in  his  MSS.,  "the  most  simple  and  natural  desires. 
We  might  as  well  term  hunger  and  thirst  'lust'  as  so  call  sex-passion, 
when  expressing  simply  Nature's  prompting.  We  miscall  it  'lust,'  cruelly 
libelling  those  to  whom  we  ascribe  it,  and  introduce  absolute  disorder. 
For,  by  foolishly  confounding  Nature's  demands  with  lust,  we  insist  upon 
restraint  upon  her." 


THE  VALUATION  OF  SEXUAL  LOVE.  133 

original  and  proper  place,  which  still  remains  vacant,  the  attempt 
at  such  a  restoration  scarcely  seems  a  hopeful  task.  We  have 
so  deeply  poisoned  the  springs  of  feeling  in  these  matters  with 
mediaeval  ascetic  crudities  that  all  our  words  of  sex  tend  soon  to 
become  bespattered  with  filth;  we  may  pick  them  up  from  the 
mud  into  which  they  have  fallen  and  seek  to  purify  them,  but  to 
many  eyes  they  will  still  seem  dirty.  One  result  of  this  tendency 
is  that  we  have  no  simple,  precise,  natural  word  for  the  love  of 
the  sexes,  and  are  compelled  to  fall  back  on  the  general  term, 
which  is  so  extensive  in  its  range  that  in  English  and  French  and 
most  of  the  other  leading  languages  of  Europe,  it  is  equally  cor- 
rect to  "love"  God  or  to  "love"  eating. 

Love,  in  the  sexual  sense,  is,  summarily  considered,  a  syn- 
thesis of  lust  (in  the  primitive  and  uncolored  sense  of  sexual 
emotion)  and  friendship.  It  is  incorrect  to  apply  the  term 
"love"  in  the  sexual  sense  to  elementary  and  uncomplicated  sexual 
desire ;  it  is  equally  incorrect  to  apply  it  to  any  variety  or  com- 
bination of  varieties  of  friendship.  There  can  be  no  sexual  love 
without  lust;  but,  on  the  other  hand,  until  the  currents  of  lust 
in  the  organism  have  been  so  irradiated  as  to  affect  other  parts  of 
the  psychic  organism — at  the  least  the  affections  and  the  social 
feelings — it  is  not  yet  sexual  love.  Lust,  the  specific  sexual  im- 
pulse, is  indeed  the  primary  and  essential  element  in  this  syn- 
thesis, for  it  alone  is  adequate  to  the  end  of  reproduction,  not 
only  in  animals  but  in  men.  But  it  is  not  until  lust  is  expanded 
and  irradiated  that  it  develops  into  the  exquisite  and  enthralling 
flower  of  love.  We  may  call  to  mind  what  happens  among 
plants :  on  the  one  hand  we  have  the  lower  organisms  in  which 
sex  is  carried  on  summarily  and  cryptogamically,  never  shedding 
any  shower  of  gorgeous  blossoms  on  the  world,  and  on  the  other 
hand  the  higher  plants  among  whom  sex  has  become  phaners- 
gamous  and  expanded  enormously  into  form  and  color  and 
fragrance. 

While  "lust"  is,  of  course,  knoAvn  all  over  the  world,  and  there  are 
everywhere  words  to  designate  it,  "love"  is  not  universally  known,  and 
in  many  languages  there  are  no  words  for  "love."  The  failures  to  find 
love  are  often  remarkable  and  unexpected.     We  may  find  it  where  we 


134  PSYCHOLOGY    OF   SEX. 

least  expect  it.  Sexual  desire  became  idealized  (as  Sergi  has  pointed 
out)  even  by  some  animals,  especially  birds,  for  when  a  bird  pines  to 
death  for  the  loss  of  its  mate  this  cannot  be  due  to  the  uncomplicated 
instinct  of  sex,  but  must  involve  the  interweaving  of  that  instinct  with 
the  other  elements  of  life  to  a  degree  which  is  rare  even  among  the  most 
civilized  men.  Some  savage  races  seem  to  have  no  fundamental  notion 
of  love,  and  (like  the  American  Nahuas)  no  primary  word  for  it,  while, 
on  the  other  hand,  in  Quichua,  the  language  of  the  ancient  Peruvians, 
there  are  nearly  six  hundred  combinations  of  the  verb  munay,  to  love. 
Among  some  peoples  love  seems  to  be  confined  to  the  women.  Letourneau 
(L 'Evolution  Litteraire,  p.  529)  points  out  that  in  various  parts  of  the 
world  women  have  taken  a  leading  part  in  creating  erotic  poetry.  It 
may  be  mentioned  in  this  connection  that  suicide  from  erotic  motives 
among  primitive  peoples  occurs  chiefly  among  women  (Zeitschrift  fur 
Sosialwissenschaft,  1899,  p.  578).  Not  a  few  savages  possess  love- 
poems,  as,  for  instance,  the  Suahali  (Velten,  in  his  Prosa  und  Poesie 
der  Suahali,  devotes  a  section  to  love-poems  reproduced  in  the  Suahali 
language).  D.  G.  Brinton,  in  an  interesting  paper  on  "The  Concep- 
tion of  Love  in  Some  American  Languages"  {Proceedings  American 
Philosophical  Society,  vol.  xxiii,  p.  546,  1886)  states  that  the  words 
for  love  in  these  languages  reveal  four  main  ways  of  expressing  the 
conception:  (1)  inarticulate  cries  of  emotion;  (2)  assertions  of  same- 
ness or  similarity;  (3)  assertions  of  conjunction  or  union;  (4)  asser- 
tions of  a  wish,  desire,  a  longing.  Brinton  adds  that  "these  same 
notions  are  those  which  underlie  the  majority  of  the  words  of  love 
in  the  great  Aryan  family  of  languages."  The  remarkable  fact  emerges, 
however,  that  the  peoples  of  Aryan  tongue  were  slow  in  developing  their 
conception  of  sexual  love.  Brinton  remarks  that  the  American  Mayas 
must  be  placed  above  the  peoples  of  early  Aryan  culture,  in  that  they 
possessed  a  radical  word  for  the  joy  of  love  which  was  in  significance 
purely  psychical,  referring  strictly  to  a  mental  state,  and  neither  to 
similarity  nor  desire.  Even  the  Greeks  were  late  in  developing  any  ideal 
of  sexual  love.  This  has  been  well  brought  out  by  E.  F.  M.  Benecke  in 
his  Antimachus  of  Colophon  and  the  Position  of  Women  in  Greek  Poetry, 
a  book  which  contains  some  hazardous  assertions,  but  is  highly  instruc- 
tive from  the  present  point  of  view.  The  Greek  lyric  poets  wrote  prac- 
tically no  love  poems  at  all  to  women  before  Anacreon,  and  his  were 
only  written  in  old  age.  True  love  for  the  Greeks  was  nearly  always 
homosexual.  The  Ionian  lyric  poets  of  early  Greece  regarded  woman 
as  only  an  instrument  of  pleasure  and  the  founder  of  the  family. 
Theognis  compares  marriage  to  cattle-breeding;  Alcman,  when  he  wishes 
to  be  complimentary  to  the  Spartan  girls,  speaks  of  them  as  his  "female 
boy-friends."  yEschylus  makes  even  a  father  assume  that  his  daughters 
will  misbehave  if  left  to  themselves.     There  is  no  sexual  love  in  Sopho- 


THE  VALUATION  OF  SEXUAL  LOVE.  135 

cles,  and  in  Euripides  it  is  only  the  women  who  fall  in  love.  Benecke 
concludes  (p.  67)  that  in  Greece  sexual  love,  down  to  a  comparatively 
later  period,  was  looked  down  on,  and  held  to  be  unworthy  of  public  dis- 
cussion and  representation.  It  was  in  Magna  Grsecia  rather  than  in 
Greece  itself  that  men  took  interest  in  women,  and  it  was  not  until  the 
Alexandrian  period,  and  notably  in  Asclepiades,  Benecke  maintains,  that 
the  love  of  women  was  regarded  as  a  matter  of  life  and  death.  There- 
after the  conception  of  sexual  love,  in  its  romantic  aspects,  appears  in 
European  life.  With  the  Celtic  story  of  Tristram,  as  Gaston  Paris 
remarks,  it  finally  appears  in  the  Christian  European  world  of  poetry 
as  the  chief  point  in  human  life,  the  great  motive  force  of  conduct. 

Romantic  love  failed,  however,  to  penetrate  the  masses  in  Europe. 
In  the  sixteenth  century,  or  whenever  it  was  that  the  ballad  of  "Glas- 
gerion"  was  written,  we  see  it  is  assumed  that  a  churl's  relation  to  his 
mistress  is  confined  to  the  mere  act  of  sexual  intercourse;  he  fails  to 
kiss  her  on  arriving  or  departing;  it  is  only  the  knight,  the  man  of 
upper  class,  who  would  think  of  offering  that  tender  civility.  And  at 
the  present  day  in,  for  instance,  the  region  between  East  Friesland  and 
the  Alps,  Bloch  states  (Sexuelleben  unserer  Zeit,  p.  29),  following  E. 
H.  Meyer,  that  the  word  "love"  is  unknown  among  the  masses,  and  only 
its  coarse  counterpart  recognized. 

On  the  other  side  of  the  world,  in  Japan,  sexual  love  seems  to  be 
in  as  great  disrepute  as  it  was  in  ancient  Greece;  thus  Miss  Tsuda,  a 
Japanese  head-mistress,  and  herself  a  Christian,  remarks  (as  quoted  by 
Mrs.  Fraser  in  World's  Work  and  Play,  Dec,  1906)  :  "That  word 
'love'  has  been  hitherto  a  word  unknown  among  our  girls,  in  the  foreign 
sense.  Duty,  submission,  kindness — these  were  the  sentiments  which  a 
girl  was  expected  to  bring  to  the  husband  who  had  been  chosen  for  her — 
and  many  happy,  harmonious  marriages  were  the  result.  Now,  your 
dear  sentimental  foreign  women  say  to  our  girls :  'It  is  wicked  to  marry 
without  love;  the  obedience  to  parents  in  such  a  case  is  an  outrage 
against  nature  and  Christianity.  If  you  love  a  man  you  must  sacrifice 
everything  to  marry  him.'  " 

When,  however,  love  is  fully  developed  it  becomes  an  enormously 
extended,  highly  complex  emotion,  and  lust,  even  in  the  best  sense  of 
that  word,  becomes  merely  a  coordinated  element  among  many  other 
elements.  Herbert  Spencer,  in  an  interesting  passage  of  his  Principles 
of  Psychology  (Part  IV,  Ch.  VIII),  has  analyzed  love  into  as  many  as 
nine  distinct  and  important  elements :  ( 1 )  the  physical  impulse  of 
sex;  (2)  the  feeling  for  beauty;  (3)  affection;  (4)  admiration  and 
respect;  (5)  love  of  approbation;  (6)  self-esteem;  (7)  proprietary 
feeling;  (8)  extended  liberty  of  action  from  the  absence  of  personal 
barriers;  (9)  exaltation  of  the  sympathies.  "This  passion,"  he  con- 
cludes, "fuses  into  one  immense  aggregate  most  of  the  elementary  excita- 
tions of  which  we  are  capable." 


136  PSYCHOLOGY    OF   SEX. 

It  is  scarcely  necessary  to  say  that  to  define  sexual  love,  or 
even  to  analyze  its  components,  is  by  no  means  to  explain  its 
mystery.  We  seek  to  satisfy  our  intelligence  by  means  of  a 
coherent  picture  of  love,  but  the  gulf  between  that  picture  and 
the  emotional  reality  must  always  be  incommensurable  and  im- 
passable. "There  is  no  word  more  often  pronounced  than  that 
of  love/'  wrote  Bonstetten  many  years  ago,  "yet  there  is  no  subject 
more  mysterious.  Of  that  which  touches  us  most  nearly  we 
know  least.  We  measure  the  march  of  the  stars  and  we  do  not 
know  how  we  love."  And  however  expert  we  have  become  in 
detecting  and  analyzing  the  causes,  the  concomitants,  and  the 
results  of  love,  we  must  still  make  the  same  confession  to-day. 
We  may,  as  some  have  done,  attempt  to  explain  love  as  a  form  of 
hunger  and  thirst,  or  as  a  force  analogous  to  electricity,  or  as  a 
kind  of  magnetism,  or  as  a  variety  of  chemical  affinity,  or  as  a 
vital  tropism,  but  these  explanations  are  nothing  more  than  ways 
of  expressing  to  ourselves  the  magnitude  of  the  phenomenon  we 
are  in  the  presence  of. 

What  has  always  baffled  men  in  the  contemplation  of  sexual 
love  is  the  seeming  inadequacy  of  its  cause,  the  immense  dis- 
crepancy between  the  necessarily  circumscribed  region  of  mucous 
membrane  which  is  the  final  goal  of  such  love  and  the  sea  of 
world-embracing  emotions  to  which  it  seems  as  the  door,  so  that, 
as  Eemy  de  Gourmont  has  said,  "the  mucous  membranes,  by  an 
ineffable  mystery,  enclose  in  their  obscure  folds  all  the  riches  of 
the  infinite."  It  is  a  mystery  before  which  the  thinker  and  the 
artist  are  alike  overcome.  Donnay,  in  his  play  L'Escalade, 
makes  a  cold  and  stern  man  of  science,  who  regards  love  as  a 
mere  mental  disorder  which  can  be  cured  like  other  disorders,  at 
last  fall  desperately  in  love  himself.  He  forces  his  way  into  the 
girl's  room,  by  a  ladder,  at  dead  of  night,  and  breaks  into  a  long 
and  passionate  speech:  "Everything  that  touches  you  becomes 
to  me  mysterious  and  sacred.  Ah !  to  think  that  a  thing  so  well 
known  as  a  woman's  body,  which  sculptors  have  modelled,  which 
poets  have  sung  of,  which  men  of  science  like  myself  have  dis- 
sected, that  such  a  thing  should  suddenly  become  an  unknown 
mystery  and  an  infinite  joy  merely  because  it  is  the  body  of  one 


THE  VALUATION  OF  SEXUAL  LOVE.  137 

particular  woman — what  insanity !  And  yet  that  is  what  I  feel."1 
That  love  is  a  natural  insanity,  a  temporary  delusion  which 
the  individual  is  compelled  to  suffer  for  the  sake  of  the  race,  is 
indeed  an  explanation  that  has  suggested  itself  to  many  who  have 
been  baffled  by  this  mystery.  That,  as  we  know,  was  the  explana- 
tion offered  by  Schopenhauer.  When  a  youth  and  a  girl  fall  into 
each  other's  arms  in  the  ecstacy  of  love  they  imagine  that  they  are 
seeking  their  own  happiness.  But  it  is  not  so,  said  Schopen- 
hauer ;  they  are  deluded  by  the  genius  of  the  race  into  the  belief 
that  they  are  seeking  a  personal  end  in  order  that  they  may  be 
induced  to  effect  a  far  greater  impersonal  end:  the  creation  of 
the  future  race.  The  intensity  of  their  passion  is  not  the 
measure  of  the  personal  happiness  they  will  secure  but  the 
measure  of  their  aptitude  for  producing  offspring.  In  accepting 
passion  and  renouncing  the  counsels  of  cautious  prudence  the 
youth  and  the  girl  are  really  sacrificing  their  chances  of 
selfish  happiness  and  fulfilling  the  larger  ends  of  Nature.  As 
Schopenhauer  saw  the  matter,  there  was  here  no  vulgar  illusion. 
The  lovers  thought  that  they  were  reaching  towards  a  boundlessly 
immense  personal  happiness ;  they  were  probably  deceived.  But 
they  were  deceived  not  because  the  reality  was  less  than  their 
imagination,  but  because  it  was  more;  instead  of  pursuing,  as 
they  thought,  a  merely  personal  end  they  were  carrying  on  the 
creative  work  of  the  world,  a  task  better  left  undone,  as  Schopen- 
hauer viewed  it,  but  a  task  whose  magnitude  he  fully  recognized.2 
It  must  be  remembered  that  in  the  lower  sense  of  deception, 
love  may  be,  and  frequently  is,  a  delusion.  A  man  may  deceive 
himself,  or  be  deceived  by  the  object  of  his  attraction,  concerning 


1  Several  centuries  earlier  another  French  writer,  the  distinguished 
physician,  A.  Laurentius  (Des  Laurens)  in  his  Historia  Anatomica 
Humani  Corporis  (lib.  viii,  Qusestio  vii)  had  likewise  puzzled  over  "the 
incredible  desire  of  coitus."  and  asked  how  it  was  that  "that  divine 
animal,  full  of  reason  and  judgment,  which  we  call  Man,  should  be 
attracted  to  those  obscene  parts  of  women,  soiled  with  filth,  which  are 
placed,  like  a  sewer,  in  the  lowest  part  of  the  body."  It  is  noteworthy 
that,  from  the  first,  and  equally  among  men  of  religion,  men  of  science, 
and  men  of  letters,  the  mystery  of  this  problem  has  peculiarly  appealed 
to  the  French  mind. 

2  Schopenhauer,  Die  Welt  als  Wille  und  Vorstellung,  vol.  ii,  pp.  60S 
et  seq. 


138  PSYCHOLOGY    OF   SEX. 

the  qualities  that  she  possesses  or  fails  to  possess.  In  first  love, 
occurring  in  youth,  such  deception  is  perhaps  entirely  normal, 
and  in  certain  suggestible  and  inflammable  types  of  people  it  is 
peculiarly  apt  to  occur.  This  kind  of  deception,  although  far 
more  frequent  and  conspicuous  in  matters  of  love — and  more 
serious  because  of  the  tightness  of  the  marriage  bond — is  liable 
to  occur  in  any  relation  of  life.  For  most  people,  however,  and 
those  not  the  least  sane  or  the  least  wise,  the  memory  of  the 
exaltation  of  love,  even  when  the  period  of  that  exaltation  is 
over,  still  remains  as,  at  the  least,  the  memory  of  one  of  the  most 
real  and  essential  facts  of  life.1 

Some  writers  seem  to  confuse  the  liability  in  matters  of  love  to 
deception  or  disappointment  with  the  larger  question  of  a  metaphysical 
illusion  in  Schopenhauer's  sense.  To  some  extent  this  confusion  per- 
haps exists  in  the  discussion  of  love  by  Renouvier  and  Prat  in  La, 
Nouvelle  Monadologie  (pp.  216  et  seq.) .  In  considering  whether  love  is 
or  is  not  a  delusion,  they  answer  that  it  is  or  is  not  according  as  we 
are,  or  are  not,  dominated  by  selfishness  and  injustice.  "It  was  not  an 
essential  error  which  presided  over  the  creation  of  the  idol,  for  the  idol 
is  only  what  in  all  things  the  ideal  is.  But  to  realize  the  ideal  in  love 
two  persons  are  needed,  and  therein  is  the  great  difficulty."  We  are 
never  justified,  they  conclude,  in  casting  contempt  on  our  love,  or  even 
on  its  object,  for  if  it  i3  true  that  we  have  not  gained  possession  of  the 
sovereign  beauty  of  the  world  it  is  equally  true  that  we  have  not 
attained  a  degree  of  perfection  that  would  have  entitled  us  justly  to 
claim  so  great  a  prize."  And  perhaps  most  of  us,  it  may  be  added,  must 
admit  in  the  end,  if  we  are  honest  with  ourselves,  that  the  prizes  of 
love  we  have  gained  in  the  world,  whatever  their  flaws,  are  far  greater 
than  we  deserved. 

We  may  well  agree  that  in  a  certain  sense  not  love  alone  but 
all  the  passions  and  desires  of  men  are  illusions.     In  that  sense 


i  "Perhaps  there  is  scarcely  a  man,"  wrote  Malthus,  a  clergyman 
as  well  as  one  of  the  profoundest  thinkers  of  his  day  (Essay  on  the 
Principle  of  Population,  1798,  Ch.  XI),  "who  has  once  experienced  the 
genuine  delight  of  virtuous  love,  however  great  his  intellectual  pleasures 
may  have  been,  that  does  not  look  back  to  the  period  as  the  sunny  spot 
in  his  whole  life,  where  his  imagination  loves  to  bask,  which  he  recol- 
lects and  contemplates  with  the  fondest  regrets,  and  which  he  would 
most  wish  to  live  over  again.  The  superiority  of  intellectual  to  sexual 
pleasures  consists  rather  in  their  filling  up  more  time,  in  their  having 
a  larger  range,  and  in  their  being  less  liable  to  satiate,  than  in  their 
being  more  real  and  essential." 


THE  VALUATION  OP  SEXUAL  LOVE.  139 

the  Gospel  of  Buddha  is  justified,  and  we  may  recognize  the  in- 
spiration of  Shakespeare  (in  the  Tempest)  and  of  Calderon  (in 
La  Yida  es  Sueno),  who  felt  that  ultimately  the  whole  world  is 
an  insubstantial  dream.  But  short  of  that  large  and  ultimate 
vision  we  cannot  accept  illusion ;  we  cannot  admit  that  love  is  a 
delusion  in  some  special  and  peculiar  sense  that  men's  other 
cravings  and  aspirations  escape.  On  the  contrary,  it  is  the  most 
solid  of  realities.  All  the  progressive  forms  of  life  are  built  up  on 
the  attraction  of  sex.  If  we  admit  the  action  of  sexual  selection 
— as  we  can  scarcely  fail  to  do  if  we  purge  it  from  its  unessential 
accretions1 — love  has  moulded  the  precise  shape  and  color,  the 
essential  beauty,  alike  of  animal  and  human  life. 

If  we  further  reflect  that,  as  many  investigators  believe,  not 
only  the  physical  structure  of  life  but  also  its  spiritual  structure 
— our  social  feelings,  our  morality,  our  religion,  our  poetry  and 
art — are,  in  some  degree  at  least,  also  built  up  on  the  impulse  of 
sex,  and  would  have  been,  if  not  non-existent,  certainly  altogether 
different  had  other  than  sexual  methods  of  propagation  prevailed 
in  the  world,  we  may  easily  realize  that  we  can  only  fall  into 
confusion  by  dismissing  love  as  a  delusion.  The  whole  edifice  of 
life  topples  down,  for  as  the  idealist  Schiller  long  since  said,  it  is 
entirely  built  up  on  hunger  and  on  love.  To  look  upon  love  as 
in  any  special  sense  a  delusion  is  merely  to  fall  into  the  trap  of 
a  shallow  cynicism.  Love  is  only  a  delusion  in  so  far  as  the 
whole  of  life  is  a  delusion,  and  if  we  accept  the  fact  of  life  it  is 
unphilosophical  to  refuse  to  accept  the  fact  of  love. 

It  is  unnecessary  here  to  magnify  the  functions  of  love  in  the 
world;  it  is  sufficient  to  investigate  its  workings  in  its  own  proper 
sphere.  It  may,  however,  be  worth  while  to  quote  a  few  expressions  of 
thinkers,  belonging  to  various  schools,  who  have  pointed  out  what 
seemed  to  them  the  far-ranging  significance  of  the  sexual  emotions  for 
the  moral  life.  "The  passions  are  the  heavenly  fire  which  gives  life  to 
the  moral  world,"  wrote  Helvetius  long  since  in  De  VEsprit.  "The 
activity  of  the  mind  depends  on  the  activity  of  the  passions,  and  it  is 
at  the  period  of  the  passions,  from  the  age  of  twenty-five  to  thirty-five 


1  The  whole  argument  of  the  fourth  volume  of  these  Studies,  on 
'Sexual  Selection  in  Man,"  points  in  this  direction. 


140  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   SEX. 

or  forty  that  men  are  capable  of  the  greatest  efforts  of  virtue  or  of 
genius."  "What  touches  sex,"  wrote  Zola,  "touches  the  centre  of  social 
life."  Even  our  regard  for  the  praise  and  blame  of  others  has  a  sexual 
origin,  Professor  Thomas  argues  {Psychological  Review,  Jan.,  1904,  pp. 
61-67),  and  it  is  love  which  is  the  source  of  susceptibility  generally  and 
of  the  altruistic  side  of  life.  "The  appearance  of  sex,"  Professor  Woods 
Hutchinson  attempts  to  show  ("Love  as  a  Factor  in  Evolution,"  Monist, 
1898),  "the  development  of  maleness  and  femaleness,  was  not  only  the 
birthplace  of  affection,  the  well-spring  of  all  morality,  but  an  enormous 
economic  advantage  to  the  race  and  an  absolute  necessity  of  progress. 
In  it  first  we  find  any  consckms  longing  for  or  active  impulse  toward  a 
fellow  creature."  "Were  man  robbed  of  the  instinct  of  procreation,  and 
of  all  that  spiritually  springs  therefrom,"  exclaimed  Maudsley  in  his 
Physiology  of  Mind,  "that  moment  would  all  poetry,  and  perhaps  also 
his  whole  moral  sense,  be  obliterated  from  his  life."  "One  seems  to 
oneself  transfigured,  stronger,  richer,  more  complete;  one  is  more  com- 
plete," says  Nietzsche  (Der  Wille  sur  Macht,  p.  389),  "we  find  here  art 
as  an  organic  function:    we  find  it  inlaid  in  the  most  angelic  instinct  of 

'love:'    we  find   it  as   the  greatest  stimulant  of  life It  is 

not  merely  that  it  changes  the  feeling  of  values:  the  lover  is  worth 
more,  is  stronger.  In  animals  this  condition  produces  new  weapons, 
pigments,  colors,  and  forms,  above  all  new  movements,  new  rhythms,  a 

new   seductive  music.     It   is   not  otherwise   in   man Even 

in  art  the  door  is  opened  to  him.  If  we  subtract  from  lyrical  work  in 
words  and  sounds  the  suggestions  of  that  intestinal  fever,  what  is  left 
over  in  poetry  and  music?  L'Art  pour  Part  perhaps,  the  quacking  vir- 
tuosity of  cold  frogs  who  perish  in  their  marsh.  All  the  rest  is  created 
by  love." 

It  would  be  easy  to  multiply  citations  tending  to  show  how  many 
diverse  thinkers  have  come  to  the  conclusion  that  sexual  love  (including 
therewith  parental  and  especially  maternal  love)  is  the  source  of  the 
chief  manifestations  of  life.  How  far  they  are  justified  in  that  conclu- 
sion, it  is  not  our  business  now  to  inquire. 

It  is  undoubtedly  true  that,  as  we  have  seen  when  discussing 
the  erratic  and  imperfect  distribution  of  the  conception  of  love, 
and  even  of  words  for  love,  over  the  world,  by  no  means  all 
people  are  equally  apt  for  experiencing,  even  at  any  time  in  their 
lives,  the  emotions  of  sexual  exaltation.  The  difference  between 
the  knight  and  the  churl  still  subsists,  and  both  may  sometimes 
be  found  in  all  social  strata.  Even  the  refinements  of  sexual 
enjoyment,  it  is  unnecessary  to  insist,  quite  commonly  remain  on 


THE  VALUATION  OF  SEXUAL  LOVE.  141 

a  merely  physical  basis,  and  have  little  effect  on  the  intellectual 
and  emotional  nature.1  But  this  is  not  the  case  with  the  people 
who  have  most  powerfully  influenced  the  course  of  the  world's 
thought  and  feeling.  The  personal  reality  of  love,  its  importance 
for  the  individual  life,  are  facts  that  have  been  testified  to  by 
some  of  the  greatest  thinkers,  after  lives  devoted  to  the  attain- 
ment of  intellectual  labor.  The  experience  of  Eenan,  who 
toward  the  end  of  his  life  set  down  in  his  remarkable  drama 
U  Abb  esse  de  Jouarre,  his  conviction  that,  even  from  the  point 
of  view  of  chastity,  love  is,  after  all,  the  supreme  thing  in  the 
world,  is  far  from  standing  alone.  "Love  has  always  appeared 
as  an  inferior  mode  of  human  music,  ambition  as  the  superior 
mode,"  wrote  Tarde,  the  distinguished  sociologist,  at  the  end  of 
his  life.  "But  will  it  always  be  thus?  Are  there  not  reasons 
for  thinking  that  the  future  perhaps  reserves  for  us  the  ineffable 
surprise  of  an  inversion  of  that  secular  order  ?"  Laplace,  half  an 
hour  before  his  death,  took  up  a  volume  of  his  own  Mecanique 
Celeste,  and  said :  "All  that  is  only  trifles,  there  is  nothing  true 
but  love."  Comte,  who  had  spent  his  life  in  building  up  a 
Positive  Philosophy  which  should  be  absolutely  real,  found  (as 
indeed  it  may  be  said  the  great  English  Positivist  Mill  also 
found)  the  culmination  of  all  his  ideals  in  a  woman,  who  was, 
he  said,  Egeria  and  Beatrice  and  Laura  in  one,  and  he  wrote: 
"There  is  nothing  real  in  the  world  but  love.  One  grows  tired  of 
thinking,  and  even  of  acting;  one  never  grows  tired  of  loving, 
nor  of  saying  so.  In  the  worst  tortures  of  affection  I  have  never 
ceased  to  feel  that  the  essential  of  happiness  is  that  the  heart 
should  be  worthily  filled — even  with  pain,  yes,  even  with  pain, 
the  bitterest  pain."  And  Sophie  Kowalewsky,  after  intellectual 
achievements  which  have  placed  her  among  the  most  distinguished 
of  her  sex,  pathetically  wrote:  "Why  can  no  one  love  me?  I 
could  give  more  than  most  women,  and  yet  the  most  insignificant 
women  are  loved  and  I  am  not."     Love,  they  all  seem  to  say,  is 


l  "Perhaps  most  average  men,"  Forel  remarks  ( Die  Sexuelle  Frage, 
p.  307 ) ,  "are  but  slightly  receptive  to  the  intoxication  of  love ;  they  are 
at  most  on  the  level  of  the  gourmet,  which  is  by  no  means  necessarily 
an  immoral  plane,  but  is  certainly  not  that  of  poetry." 


142  PSYCHOLOGY   OP  SEX. 

the  one  thing  that  is  supremely  worth  while.  The  greatest  and 
most  brilliant  of  the  world's  intellectual  giants,  in  their  moments 
of  final  insight,  thus  reach  the  habitual  level  of  the  humble  and 
almost  anonymous  persons,  cloistered  from  the  world,  who  wrote 
The  Imitation  of  Christ  or  The  Letters  of  a  Portuguese  Nun. 
And  how  many  others ! 


CHAPTEE  V. 

THE  FUNCTION  OF  CHASTITY. 

Chastity  Essential  to  the  Dignity  of  Love — The  Eighteenth  Century 
Revolt  Against  the  Ideal  of  Chastity — Unnatural  Forms  of  Chastity — 
The  Psychological  Basis  of  Asceticism — Asceticism  and  Chastity  as 
Savage  Virtues — The  Significance  of  Tahiti — Chastity  Among  Barbarous 
Peoples — Chastity  Among  the  Early  Christians — Struggles  of  the  Saints 
with  the  Flesh — The  Romance  of  Christian  Chastity — Its  Decay  in 
Mediaeval  Times — Aucassin  et  Nicolette  and  the  new  Romance  of  Chaste 
Love — The  Unchastity  of  the  Northern  Barbarians — The  Penitentials — 
Influence  of  the  Renaissance  and  the  Reformation — The  Revolt  Against 
Virginity  as  a  Virtue — The  Modern  Conception  of  Chastity  as  a  Virtue 
— The  Influences  That  Favor  the  Virtue  of  Chastity — Chastity  as  a  Dis- 
cipline— The  Value  of  Chastity  for  the  Artist — Potency  and  Impotence 
in  Popular  Estimation — Thu  Correct  Definitions  of  Asceticism  and 
Chastity. 

The  supreme  importance  of  chastity,  and  even  of  asceticism, 
has  never  at  any  time,  or  in  any  greatly  vital  human  society, 
altogether  failed  of  recognition.  Sometimes  chastity  has  been 
exalted  in  human  estimation,  sometimes  it  has  been  debased ;  it 
has  frequently  changed  the  nature  of  its  manifestations;  but  it 
has  always  been  there.  It  is  even  a  part  of  the  beautiful  vision  of 
all  Nature.  "The  glory  of  the  world  is  seen  only  by  a  chaste 
mind,"  said  Thoreau  with  his  fine  extravagance.  "To  whomso- 
ever this  fact  is  not  an  awful  but  beautiful  mystery  there  are  no 
flowers  in  Nature."  Without  chastity  it  is  impossible  to  main- 
tain the  dignity  of  sexual  love.  The  society  in  which  its  estima- 
tion sinks  to  a  minimum  is  in  the  last  stages  of  degeneration. 
Chastity  has  for  sexual  love  an  importance  which  it  can  never 
lose,  least  of  all  to-day. 

It  is  quite  true  that  during  the  eighteenth  and  nineteenth 
centuries  many  men  of  high  moral  and  intellectual  distinction 
pronounced  very  decidedly  their  condemnation  of  the  ideal  of 
chastity.     The  great  Buffon  refused  to  recognize  chastity  as  an 

(143) 


144  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   SEX. 

ideal  and  referred  scornfully  to  "that  kind  of  insanity  which,  has 
turned  a  girl's  virginity  into  a  thing  with  a  real  existence,"  while 
William  Morris,  in  his  downright  manner,  once  declared  at.  a 
meeting  of  the  Fellowship  of  the  New  Life,  that  asceticism  is  "the 
most  disgusting  vice  that  afflicted  human  nature."  Blake, 
though  he  seems  always  to  have  been  a  strictly  moral  man  in  the 
most  conventional  sense,  felt  nothing  but  contempt  for  chastity, 
and  sometimes  confers  a  kind  of  religious  solemnity  on  the  idea 
of  unchastity.  Shelley,  who  may  have  been  unwise  in  sexual 
matters  but  can  scarcely  be  called  unchaste,  also  often  seems  to 
associate  religion  and  morality,  not  with  chastity,  but  with  un- 
chastity, and  much  the  same  may  be  said  of  James  Hinton.1 

But  all  these  men — with  other  men  of  high  character  who 
have  pronounced  similar  opinions — were  reacting  against  false, 
decayed,  and  conventional  forms  of  chastity.  They  were  not 
rebelling  against  an  ideal;  they  were  seeking  to  set  up  an  ideal 
in  a  place  where  they  realized  that  a  mischievous  pretense  was 
masquerading  as  a  moral  reality. 

We  cannot  accept  an  ideal  of  chastity  unless  we  ruthlessly 
cast  aside  all  the  unnatural  and  empty  forms  of  chastity.  If 
chastity  is  merely  a  fatiguing  effort  to  emulate  in  the  sexual 
sphere  the  exploits  of  professional  fasting  men,  an  effort  using 
up  all  the  energies  of  the  organism  and  resulting  in  no  achieve- 
ment greater  than  the  abstinence  it  involves,  then  it  is  surely  an 
unworthy  ideal.  If  it  is  a  feeble  submission  to  an  external 
conventional  law  which  there  is  no  courage  to  break,  then  it  is 
not  an  ideal  at  all.  If  it  is  a  rule  of  morality  imposed  by  one 
sex  on  the  opposite  sex,  then  it  is  an  injustice  and  provocative 
of  revolt.  If  it  is  an  abstinence  from  the  usual  forms  of  sex- 
uality, replaced  by  more  abnormal  or  more  secret  forms,  then  it  is 
simply  an  unreality  based  on  misconception.  And  if  it  is  merely 
an    external    acceptance    of    conventions    without   any    further 

1  For  Blake  and  for  Shelley,  as  well  as,  it  may  be  added,  for  Hin- 
ton, chastity,  as  Todhunter  remarks  in  his  Study  of  Shelley,  is  "a  type 
of  submission  to  the  actual,  a  renunciation  of  the  infinite,  and  is  there- 
fore hated  by  them.  The  chaste  man,  i.e.,  the  man  of  prudence  and  self- 
control,  is  the  man  who  has  lost  the  nakedness  of  his  primitive 
innocence." 


THE  FUNCTION  OP   CHASTITY.  145 

acceptance,  even  in  act,  then  it  is  a  contemptible  farce.  These 
are  the  forms  of  chastity  which  during  the  past  two  centuries 
many  fine-souled  men  have  vigorously  rejected. 

The  fact  that  chastity,  or  asceticism,  is  a  real  virtue,  with 
fine  uses,  becomes  evident  when  we  realize  that  it  has  flourished  at 
all  times,  in  connection  with  all  kinds  of  religions  and  the  most 
various  moral  codes.  We  find  it  pronounced  among  savages,  and 
the  special  virtues  of  savagery — hardness,  endurance,  and  bravery 
— are  intimately  connected  with  the  cultivation  of  chastity  and 
asceticism.1  It  is  true  that  savages  seldom  have  any  ideal  of 
chastity  in  the  degraded  modern  sense,  as  a  state  of  permanent 
abstinence  from  sexual  relationships  having  a  merit  of  its  own 
apart  from  any  use.  They  esteem  chastity  for  its  values,  magical 
or  real,  as  a  method  of  self-control  which  contributes  towards  the 
attainment  of  important  ends.  The  ability  to  bear  pain  and 
restraint  is  nearly  always  a  main  element  in  the  initiation  of 
youths  at  puberty.  The  custom  of  refraining  from  sexual  inter- 
course before  expeditions  of  war  and  hunting,  and  other  serious 
concerns  involving  great  muscular  and  mental  strain,  whatever 
the  motives  assigned,  is  a  sagacious  method  of  economizing 
energy.  The  extremely  wide-spread  habit  of  avoiding  inter- 
course during  pregnancy  and  suckling,  again,  is  an  admirable  pre- 
caution in  sexual  hygiene  which  it  is  extremely  difficult  to 
obtain  the  observance  of  in  civilization.  Savages,  also,  are  per- 
fectly well  aware  how  valuable  sexual  continence  is,  in  combina- 
tion with  fasting  and  solitude,  to  acquire  the  aptitude  for  ab- 
normal spiritual  powers. 

Thus  C.  Hill  Tout  (Journal  Anthropological  Institute,  Jan.- June, 
1905,  pp.  143-145)  gives  an  interesting  account  of  the  self-discipline 
undergone  by  those  among  the  Salish  Indians  of  British  Columbia,  who 
seek  to  acquire  shamanistic  powers.     The  psychic  effects  of  such  train- 


1  For  evidence  of  the  practices  of  savages  in  this  matter,  see  Appen- 
dix A  to  the  third  volume  of  these  Studies,  "The  Sexual  Instinct  in 
Savages."  Of.  also  Chs.  IV  and  VII  of  Westermarck's  History  of 
Human  Marriage,  and  also  Chs.  XXXVIII  and  XLI  of  the  same  author's 
Origin  and  Development  of  the  Moral  Ideas,  vol.  ii;  Frazer's  Golden 
Bough  contains  much  bearing  on  this  subject,  as  also  Crawley's  Mystie 
Rose. 

10 


146  PSYCHOLOGY    OF   SEX. 

ing  on  these  men,  says  Hill  Tout,  is  undoubted.  "It  enables  them 
to  undertake  and  accomplish  feats  of  abnormal  strength,  agility,  and 
endurance;  and  gives  them  at  times,  besides  a  general  exaltation  of  the 
senses,  undoubted  clairvoyant  and  other  supernormal  mental  and  bodily 
powers."  At  the  other  end  of  the  world,  as  shown  by  the  Reports  of 
the  Anthropological  Expedition  to  Torres  Straits  (vol.  v,  p.  321),  closely 
analogous  methods  of  obtaining  supernatural  powers  are  also  customary. 
There  are  fundamental  psychological  reasons  for  the  wide  prev- 
alence of  asceticism  and  for  the  remarkable  manner  in  which  it  involves 
self-mortification,  even  acute  physical  suffering.  Such  pain  is  an  actual 
psychic  stimulant,  more  especially  in  slightly  neurotic  persons.  This  is 
well  illustrated  .by  a  young  woman,  a  patient  of  Janet's,  who  suffered 
from  mental  depression  and  was  accustomed  to  find  relief  by  slightly 
burning  her  hands  and  feet.  She  herself  clearly  understood  the  nature 
of  her  actions.  "I  feel,"  she  said,  "that  I  make  an  effort  when  I  hold 
my  hands  on  the  stove,  or  when  I  pour  boiling  water  on  my  feet;  it  is 
a  violent  act  and  it  awakens  me:    I  feel  that  it  is  really  done  by  myself 

and  not  by  another To  make  a  mental  effort  by  itself  is 

too  difficult  for  me;  I  have  to  supplement  it  by  physical  efforts.  I 
have  not  succeeded  in  any  other  way;  that  is  all;  when  I  brace  myself 
up  to  burn  myself  I  make  my  mind  freer,  lighter  and  more  active  for 
several  days.  Why  do  you  speak  of  my  desire  for  mortification?  My 
parents  believe  that,  but  it  is  absurd.  It  would  be  a  mortification  if 
it  brought  any  suffering,  but  I  enjoy  this  suffering,  it  gives  me  back  my 
mind;  it  prevents  my  thoughts  from  stopping;  what  would  one  not  do 
to  attain  such  happiness?"  (P.  Janet,  "The  Pathogenesis  of  Some  Impul- 
sions," Journal  of  Abnormal  Psychology,  April,  1906.)  If  we  under- 
stand this  psychological  process  we  may  realize  how  it  is  that  even  in 
the  higher  religions,  however  else  they  may  differ,  the  practical  value 
of  asceticism  and  mortification  as  the  necessary  door  to  the  most  exalted 
religious  state  is  almost  universally  recognized,  and  with  complete  cheer- 
fulness. "Asceticism  and  ecstacy  are  inseparable,"  as  Probst-Biraben 
remarks  at  the  outset  of  an  interesting  paper  on  Mahommedan  mysti- 
cism ("L'Extase  dans  le  Mysticisme  Musulman,"  Revue  Philosophique, 
Nov.,  1906).  Asceticism  is  the  necessary  ante-chamber  to  spiritual  per- 
fection. 

It  thus  happens  that  savage  peoples  largely  base  their  often 
admirable  enforcement  of  asceticism  not  on  the  practical  grounds 
that  would  justify  it,  but  on  religious  grounds  that  with  the 
growth  of  intelligence  fall  into  discredit.1     Even,  however,  when 


i  See,   e.g.,  Westermarek,  Origin  and  Development   of  the  Moral 
Ideas,  vol.  ii,  pp.  412  et  seq. 


THE   FUNCTION   OF   CHASTITY.  147 

the  scrupulous  observances  of  savages,  whether  in  sexual  or  in  non- 
sexual matters,  are  without  any  obviously  sound  basis  it  cannot  be 
said  that  they  are  entirely  useless  if  they  tend  to  encourage  self- 
control  and  the  sense  of  reverence.1  The  would-be  intelligent 
and  practical  peoples  who  cast  aside  primitive  observances  because 
they  seem  baseless  or  even  ridiculous,  need  a  still  finer  practical 
sense  and  still  greater  intelligence  in  order  to  realize  that,  though 
the  reasons  for  the  observances  have  been  wrong,  yet  the  observ- 
ances themselves  may  have  been  necessary  methods  of  attaining 
personal  and  social  efficiency.  It  constantly  happens  in  the  course 
of  civilization  that  we  have  to  revive  old  observances  and  furnish 
them  with  new  reasons. 

In  considering  the  moral  quality  of  chastity  among  savages,  we 
must  carefully  separate  that  chastity  which  among  semi-primitive  peo- 
ples is  exclusively  imposed  upon  women.  This  has  no  moral  quality 
whatever,  for  it  is  not  exercised  as  a  useful  discipline,  but  merely 
enforced  in  order  to  heighten  the  economic  and  erotic  value  of  the 
women.  Many  authorities  believe  that  the  regard  for  women  as  prop- 
erty furnishes  the  true  reason  for  the  widespread  insistence  on  virginity 
in  brides.  Thus  A.  B.  Ellis,  speaking  of  the  West  Coast  of  Africa 
(Toruba-Speaking  Peoples,  pp.  183  et  seq.) ,  says  that  girls  of  good  class 
are  betrothed  as  mere  children,  and  are  carefully  guarded  from  men, 
while  girls  of  lower  class  are  seldom  betrothed,  and  may  lead  any  life 
they  choose.  "In  this  custom  of  infant  or  child  betrothals  we  probably 
find  the  key  to  that  curious  regard  for  ante-nuptial  chastity  found  not 
only  among  the  tribes  of  the  Gold  and  Slave  Coasts,  but  also  among 
many  other  uncivilized  peoples  in  different  parts  of  the  world."  In  a 
very  different  part  of  the  world,  in  Northern  Siberia,  "the  Yakuts," 
Sieroshevski  states  (Journal  Anthropological  Institute,  Jan.- June,  1901, 


1  Thus  an  old  Maori  declared,  a  few  years  ago,  that  the  decline  of 
his  race  has  been  entirely  due  to  the  loss  of  the  ancient  religious  faith 
in  the  tabu.  "For,"  said  he  (I  quote  from  an  Auckland  newspaper), 
"in  the  olden-time  our  tapu  ramified  the  whole  social  system.  The 
head,  the  hair,  spots  where  apparitions  appeared,  places  which  the 
tohungas  proclaimed  as  sacred,  we  have  forgotten  and  disregarded.  Who 
nowadays  thinks  of  the  sacredness  of  the  head?  See  when  the  kettle 
boils,  the  young  man  jumps  up,  whips  the  cap  off  his  head,  and  uses  it 
for  a  kettle-holder.  Who  nowadays  but  looks  on  with  indifference  when 
the  barber  of  the  village,  if  he  be  near  the  fire,  shakes  the  loose  hair  off 
his  cloth  into  it,  and  the  joke  and  the  laughter  goes  on  as  if  no  sacred 
operation  had  just  been  concluded.  Food  is  consumed  on  places  which, 
in  bygone  days,  it  dared  not  even  be  carried  over." 


148  PSYCHOLOGY    OF   SEX. 

p.  96),  "see  nothing  immoral  in  illicit  love,  providing  only  that  nobody 
suffers  material  loss  by  it.  It  is  true  that  parents  will  scold  a  daughter 
if  her  conduct  threatens  to  deprive  them  of  their  gain  from  the  bride- 
price;  but  if  once  they  have  lost  hope  of  marrying  her  off,  or  if  the 
bride-price  has  been  spent,  they  manifest  complete  indifference  to  her 
conduct.  Maidens  who  no  longer  expect  marriage  are  not  restrained 
at  all,  if  they  observe  decorum  it  is  only  out  of  respect  to  custom." 
Westermarck  (History  of  Human  Marriage,  pp.  123  et  seq.)  also  shows 
the  connection  between  the  high  estimates  of  virginity  and  the  concep- 
tion of  woman  as  property,  and  returning  to  the  question  in  his  later 
work,  The  Origin  and  Development  of  the  Moral  Ideas  (vol.  ii,  Ch. 
XLII),  after  pointing  out  that  "marriage  by  purchase  has  thus  raised 
the  standard  of  female  chastity,"  he  refers  (p.  437)  to  the  significant 
fact  that  the  seduction  of  an  unmarried  girl  "is  chiefly,  if  not  exclu- 
sively, regarded  as  an  offense  against  the  parents  or  family  of  the  girl," 
and  there  is  no  indication  that  it  is  ever  held  by  savages  that  any  wrong 
has  been  done  to  the  woman  herself.  Westermarck  recognizes  at  the 
same  time  that  the  preference  given  to  virgins  has  also  a  biological  basis 
in  the  instinctive  masculine  feeling  of  jealousy  in  regard  to  women  who 
have  had  intercourse  with  other  men,  and  especially  in  the  erotic  charm 
for  men  of  the  emotional  state  of  shyness  which  accompanies  virginity. 
(This  point  has  been  dealt  with  in  the  discussion  of  Modesty  in  vol.  i 
of  these  Studies.) 

It  is  scarcely  necessary  to  add  that  the  insistence  on  the  virginity 
of  brides  is  by  no  means  confined,  as  A.  B.  Ellis  seems  to  imply,  to 
uncivilized  peoples,  nor  is  it  necessary  that  wife-purchase  should  always 
accompany  it.  The  preference  still  persists,  not  only  by  virtue  of  its 
natural  biological  basis,  but  as  a  refinement  and  extension  of  the  idea 
of  woman  as  property,  among  those  civilized  peoples  who,  like  ourselves, 
inherit  a  form  of  marriage  to  some  extent  based  on  wife-purchase. 
Under  such  conditions  a  woman's  chastity  has  an  important  social  func- 
tion to  perform,  being,  as  Mrs.  Mona  Caird  has  put  it  (The  Morality  of 
Marriage,  1897,  p.  88),  the  watch-dog  of  man's  property.  The  fact  that 
no  element  of  ideal  morality  enters  into  the  question  is  shown  by  the 
usual  absence  of  any  demand  for  ante-nuptial  chastity  in  the  husband. 

It  must  not  be  supposed  that  when,  as  is  most  usually  the  case, 
there  is  no  complete  and  permanent  prohibition  of  extra-nuptial  inter- 
course, mere  unrestrained  license  prevails.  That  has  probably  never 
happened  anywhere  among  uncontaminated  savages.  The  rule  probably 
is  that,  as  among  the  tribes  at  Torres  Straits  (Reports  Cambridge 
Anthropological  Expedition,  vol.  v,  p.  275 ) ,  there  is  no  complete  con- 
tinence before  marriage,  but  neither  is  there  any  unbridled  license. 

The  example  of  Tahiti  is  instructive  as  regards  the  prevalence  of 
chastity  among  peoples   of  what  we  generally   consider   low  grades  of 


THE   FUNCTION    OF    CHASTITY.  149 

civilization.  Tahiti,  according  to  all  who  have  visited  it,  from  the 
earliest  explorers  down  to  that  distinguished  American  surgeon,  the  late 
Dr.  Nicholas  Senn,  is  an  island  possessing  qualities  of  natural  beauty 
and  climatic  excellence,  which  it  is  impossible  to  rate  too  highly.  "I 
seemed  to  be  transported  into  the  garden  of  Eden,"  said  Bougainville  in 
1768.  But,  mainly  under  the  influence  of  the  early  English  missionaries 
who  held  ideas  of  theoretical  morality  totally  alien  to  those  of  the  inhab- 
itants of  the  islands,  the  Tahitians  have  become  the  stock  example  of  a 
population  given  over  to  licentiousness  and  all  its  awful  results.  Thus, 
in  his  valuable  Polynesian  Researches  (second  edition,  1832,  vol.  i,  Ch. 
IX)  William  Ellis  says  that  the  Tahitians  practiced  "the  worst  pollu- 
tions of  which  it  was  possible  for  man  to  be  guilty,"  though  not  specify- 
ing them.  When,  however,  Ave  carefully  examine  the  narratives  of  the 
early  visitors  to  Tahiti,  before  the  population  became  contaminated  by 
contact  with  Europeans,  it  becomes  clear  that  this  view  needs  serious 
modification.  "The  great  plenty  of  good  and  nourishing  food,"  wrote  an 
early  explorer,  J.  B.  Forster  ( Observations  Made  on  a  Voyage  Bound  the 
World,  1778,  pp.  231,  409,  422),  "together  with  the  fine  climate,  the 
beauty  and  unreserved  behavior  of  their  females,  invite  them  powerfully 
to  the  enjoyments  and  pleasures  of  love.  They  begin  very  early  to 
abandon  themselves  to  the  most  libidinous  scenes.  Their  songs,  their 
dances,  and  dramatic  performances,  breathe  a  spirit  of  luxury."  Yet 
he  is  over  and  over  again  impelled  to  set  down  facts  which  bear  testi- 
mony to  the  virtues  of  these  people.  Though  rather  effeminate  in 
build,  they  are  athletic,  he  says.  Moreover,  in  their  wars  they  fight 
with  great  bravery  and  valor.  They  are,  for  the  rest,  hospitable.  He 
remarks  that  they  treat  their  married  women  with  great  respect,  and 
that  women  generally  are  nearly  the  equals  of  men,  both  in  intelligence 
and  in  social  position;  he  gives  a  charming  description  of  the  women. 
"In  short,  their  character,"  Forster  concludes,  "is  as  amiable  as  that  of 
any  nation  that  ever  came  unimproved  out  of  the  hands  of  Nature,"  and 
he  remarks  that,  as  was  felt  by  the  South  Sea  peoples  generally,  "when- 
ever we  came  to  this  happy  island  we  could  evidently  perceive  the 
opulence  and  happiness  of  its  inhabitants."  It  is  noteworthy  also,  that, 
notwithstanding  the  high  importance  which  the  Tahitians  attached  to 
the  erotic  side  of  life,  they  were  not  deficient  in  regard  for  chastity. 
When  Cook,  who  visited  Tahiti  many  times,  was  among  "this  benevolent 
humane"  people,  he  noted  their  esteem  for  chastity,  and  found  that  not 
only  were  betrothed  girls  strictly  guarded  before  marriage,  but  that  men 
also  who  had  refrained  from  sexual  intercourse  for  some  time  before 
marriage  were  believed  to  pass  at  death  immediately  into  the  abode  of 
the  blessed.  "Their  behavior,  on  all  occasions,  seems  to  indicate  a  great 
openness  and  generosity  of  disposition.  I  never  saw  them,  in  any  mis- 
fortune, labor  under  the  appearance  of  anxiety,  after  the  critical  moment 


150  PSYCHOLOGY   OF  SEX. 

was  past.  Neither  does  care  ever  seem  to  wrinkle  their  brow.  On  the 
contrary,  even  the  approach  of  death  does  not  appear  to  alter  their  usual 
vivacity"  (Third  Voyage  of  Discovery,  1776-1780).  Turnbull  visited 
Tahiti  at  a  later  period  (A  Voyage  Round  the  World  in  1800,  etc.,  pp. 
374-5),  but  while  finding  all  sorts  of  vices  among  them,  he  is  yet  com- 
pelled to  admit  their  virtues:  "Their  manner  of  addressing  strangers, 
from  the  king  to  the  meanest  subject,  is  courteous  and  affable  in  the 

extreme They   certainly   live  amongst   each  other   in  more 

harmony  than  is  usual  amongst  Europeans.     During  the  whole  time  I 

was  amongst  them  I  never  saw  such  a  thing  as  a  battle I 

never  remember  to  have  seen  an  Otaheitean  out  of  temper.  They  jest 
upon  each  other  with  greater  freedom  than  the  Europeans,  but  these 

jests  are  never  taken  in  ill  part With  regard  to  food,  it 

is,  I  believe,  an  invariable  law  in  Otaheite  that  whatever  is  possessed  by 
one  is  common  to  all."  Thus  we  see  that  even  among  a  people  who  are 
commonly  referred  to  as  the  supreme  example  of  a  nation  given  up  to 
uncontrolled  licentiousness,  the  claims  of  chastity  were  admitted,  and 
many  other  virtues  vigorously  flourished.  The  Tahitians  were  brave, 
hospitable,  self-controlled,  courteous,  considerate  to  the  needs  of  others, 
chivalrous  to  women,  even  appreciative  of  the  advantages  of  sexual 
restraint,  to  an  extent  which  has  rarely,  if  ever,  been  known  among 
those  Christian  nations  which  have  looked  down  upon  them  as  abandoned 
to  unspeakable  vices. 

As  we  turn  from  savages  towards  peoples  in  the  barbarous 
and  civilized  stages  we  find  a  general  tendency  for  chastity,  in  so 
far  as  it  is  a  common  possession  of  the  common  people,  to  be  less 
regarded,  or  to  be  retained  only  as  a  traditional  convention  no 
longer  strictly  observed.  The  old  grounds  for  chastity  in  primi- 
tive religions  and  tabu  have  decayed  and  no  new  grounds  have 
been  generally  established.  "Although  the  progress  of  civiliza- 
tion/' wrote  Gibbon  long  ago,  "has  undoubtedly  contributed  to 
assuage  the  fiercer  passions  of  human  nature,  it  seems  to  have 
been  less  favorable  to  the  virtue  of  chastity/'  and  Westermarck 
concludes  that  "irregular  connections  between  the  sexes  have,  on 
the  whole,  exhibited  a  tendency  to  increase  along  with  the  prog- 
ress of  civilization." 

The  main  difference  in  the  social  function  of  chastity  as  we 
pass  from  savagery  to  higher  stages  of  culture  seems  to  be  that 
it  ceases  to  exist  as  a  general  hygienic  measure  or  a  general 
ceremonial  observance,  and,  for  the  most  part,  becomes  confined 


THE   FUNCTION    OF    CHASTITY.  151 

to  special  philosophic  or  religious  sects  which  cultivate  it  to  an 
extreme  degree  in  a  more  or  less  professional  way.  This  state  of 
things  is  well  illustrated  by  the  Eoman  Empire  during  the  early 
centuries  of  the  Christian  era.1  Christianity  itself  was  at  first 
one  of  these  sects  enamored  of  the  ideal  of  chastity;  but  by  its 
superior  vitality  it  replaced  all  the  others  and  finally  imposed  its 
ideals,  though  by  no  means  its  primitive  practices,  on  European 
society  generally. 

Chastity  manifested  itself  in  primitive  Christianity  in  two 
different  though  not  necessarily  opposed  ways.  On  the  one 
hand  it  took  a  stern  and  practical  form  in  vigorous  men  and 
women  who,  after  being  brought  up  in  a  society  permitting  a 
high  degree  of  sexual  indulgence,  suddenly  found  themselves  con- 
vinced of  the  sin  of  such  indulgence.  The  battle  with  the  society 
they  had  been  born  into,  and  with  their  own  old  impulses  and 
habits,  became  so  severe  that  they  often  found  themselves  com- 
pelled to  retire  from  the  world  altogether.  Thus  it  was  that  the 
parched  solitudes  of  Egypt  were  peopled  with  hermits  largely 
occupied  with  the  problem  of  subduing  their  own  flesh.  Their 
preoccupation,  and  indeed  the  preoccupation  of  much  early 
Christian  literature,  with  sexual  matters,  may  be  said  to  be  vastly 
greater  than  was  the  case  with  the  pagan  society  they  had  left. 
Paganism  accepted  sexual  indulgence  and  was  then  able  to  dis- 
miss it,  so  that  in  classic  literature  we  find  very  little  insistence 
on  sexual  details  except  in  writers  like  Martial,  Juvenal  and 
Petronius  who  introduce  them  mainly  for  satirical  ends.  But 
the  Christians  could  not  thus  escape  from  the  obsession  of  sex; 
it  was  ever  with  them.  We  catch  interesting  glimpses  of  their 
struggles,  for  the  most  part  barren  struggles,  in  the  Epistles  of 
St.  Jerome,  who  had  himself  been  an  athlete  in  these  ascetic  con- 
tests. 

"Oh,  how  many  times,"  wrote  St.  Jerome  to  Eustochium,  the 
virgin  to  whom  he  addressed  one  of  the  longest  and  most  interesting  of 
his  letters,  "when  in  the  desert,  in  that  vast  solitude  which,  burnt  up 


l  Thus,  long  before  Christian  monks  arose,  the  ascetic  life  of  the 
cloister  on  very  similar  lines  existed  in  Egypt  in  the  worship  of  Serapis 
(Dill,  Roman  Society,  p.  79). 


152  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   SEX. 

by  the  heart  of  the  sun,  offers  but  a  horrible  dwelling  to  monks,  I 
imagined  myself  among  the  delights  of  Rome!  I  was  alone,  for  my  soul 
was  full  of  bitterness.  My  limbs  were  covered  by  a  wretched  sack  and 
my  skin  was  as  black  as  an  Ethiopian's.  Every  day  I  wept  and  groaned, 
and  if  I  was  unwillingly  overcome  by  sleep  my  lean  body  lay  on  the  bare 
earth.  I  say  nothing  of  my  food  and  drink,  for  in  the  desert  even 
invalids  have  no  drink  but  cold  water,  and  cooked  food  is  regarded  as 
a  luxury.  Well,  I,  who,  out  of  fear  of  hell,  had  condemned  myself  to  this 
prison,  companion  of  scorpions  and  wild  beasts,  often  seemed  in  imagina- 
tion among  bands  of  girls.  My  face  was  pale  with  fasting  and  my  mind 
within  my  frigid  body  was  burning  with  desire;  the  fires  of  lust  would 
still  flare  up  in  a  body  that  already  seemed  to  be  dead.  Then,  deprived 
of  all  help,  I  threw  myself  at  the  feet  of  Jesus,  washing  them  with  my 
tears  and  drying  them  with  my  hair,  subjugating  my  rebellious  flesh  by 
long  fasts.  I  remember  that  more  than  once  I  passed  the  night  uttering 
cries  and  striking  my  breast  until  God  sent  me  peace."  "Our  century," 
wrote  St.  Chrysostom  in  his  Discourse  to  Those  Who  Keep  Virgins  in 
Their  Houses,  "has  seen  many  men  who  have  bound  their  bodies  with 
chains,  clothed  themselves  in  sacks,  retired  to  the  summits  of  mountains 
where  they  have  lived  in  constant  vigil  and  fasting,  giving  the  example 
of  the  most  austere  discipline  and  forbidding  all  women  to  cross  the 
thresholds  of  their  humble  dwellings;  and  yet,  in  spite  of  all  the  severi- 
ties they  have  exercised  on  themselves,  it  was  with  difficulty  they  could 
repress  the  fury  of  their  passions."  Hilarion,  says  Jerome,  saw  visions 
of  naked  women  when  he  lay  down  on  his  solitary  couch  and  delicious 
meats  when  he  sat  down  to  his  frugal  table.  Such  experiences  rendered 
the  early  saints  very  scrupulous.  "They  used  to  say,"  we  are  told  in 
an  interesting  history  of  the  Egyptian  anchorites,  Palladius's  Paradise 
of  the  Holy  Fathers,  belonging  to  the  fourth  century  (A.  W.  Budge,  The 
Paradise,  vol.  ii,  p.  129 ) ,  "that  Abba  Isaac  went  out  and  found  the  foot- 
print of  a  woman  on  the  road,  and  he  thought  about  it  in  his  mind  and 
destroyed  it  saying,  'If  a  brother  seeth  it  he  may  fall.' "  Similarly, 
according  to  the  rules  of  St.  Csesarius  of  Aries  for  nuns,  no  male  cloth- 
ing was  to  be  taken  into  the  convent  for  the  purpose  of  washing  or 
mending.  Even  in  old  age,  a  certain  anxiety  about  chastity  still  re- 
mained. One  of  the  brothers,  we  are  told  in  The  Paradise  (p.  132)  said 
to  Abba  Zeno,  "Behold  thou  hast  grown  old,  how  is  the  matter  of  forni- 
cation?" The  venerable  saint  replied,  "It  knocketh,  but  it  passeth  on." 
As  the  centuries  went  by  the  same  strenuous  anxiety  to  guard 
chastity  still  remained,  and  the  old  struggle  constantly  reappeared  (see, 
e.g.,  Migne's  Dictionnaire  d'Ascetisme,  art.  "Demon,  Tentation  du"). 
Some  saints,  it  is  true,  like  Luigi  di  Gonzaga,  were  so  angelically  natured 
that  they  never  felt  the  sting  of  sexual  desire.  These  seem  to  have  been 
the  exception,     St.  Benedict  and  St.  Francis  experienced  the  difficulty  of 


THE   FUNCTION   OF    CHASTITY.  153 

subduing  the  flesh.  St.  Magdalena  de  Pozzi,  in  order  to  dispel  sexual 
desires,  would  roll  on  thorny  bushes  till  the  blood  came.  Some  saints 
kept  a  special  cask  of  cold  water  in  their  cells  to  stand  in  (Lea, 
Sacerdotal  Celibacy,  vol.  i,  p.  124).  On  the  other  hand,  the  Blessed 
Angela  de  Fulginio  tells  us  in  her  Visiones  (cap.  XIX)  that,  until  for- 
bidden by  her  confessor,  she  would  place  hot  coals  in  her  secret  parts, 
hoping  by  material  fire  to  extinguish  the  fire  of  concupiscence.  St. 
Aldhelm,  the  holy  Bishop  of  Sherborne,  in  the  eighth  century,  also 
adopted  a  homeopathic  method  of  treatment,  though  of  a  more  literal 
kind,  for  William  of  Malmsbury  states  that  when  tempted  by  the  flesh 
he  would  have  women  to  sit  and  lie  by  him  until  he  grew  calm  again; 
the  method  proved  very  successful,  for  the  reason,  it  was  thought,  that 
the  Devil  felt  he  had  been  made  a  fool  of. 

In  time  the  Catholic  practice  and  theory  of  asceticism  became 
more  formalized  and  elaborated,  and  its  beneficial  effects  were  held  to 
extend  beyond  the  individual  himself.  "Asceticism  from  the  Christian 
point  of  view,"  writes  Brenier  de  Montmorand  in  an  interesting  study 
("Ascgtisme  et  Mysticisme,"  Revue  Philosophique,  March,  1904)  "is 
nothing  else  than  all  the  therapeutic  measures  making  for  moral  purifi- 
cation. The  Christian  ascetic  is  an  athlete  struggling  to  transform  his 
corrupt  nature  and  make  a  road  to  God  through  the  obstacles  due  to  his 
passions  and  the  world.  He  is  not  working  in  his  own  interests  alone, 
but — by  virtue  of  the  reversibility  of  merit  which  compensates  that  of 
solidarity  in  error — for  the  good  and  for  the  salvation  of  the  whole  of 
society." 

This  is  the  aspect  of  early  Christian  asceticism  most  often 
emphasized.  But  there  is  another  aspect  which  may  be  less 
familiar,  but  has  been  by  no  means  less  important.  Primitive 
Christian  chastity  was  on  one  side  a  strenuous  discipline.  On 
another  side  it  was  a  romance,  and  this  indeed  was  its  most 
specifically  Christian  side,  for  athletic  asceticism  has  been  asso- 
ciated with  the  most  various  religious  and  philosophic  beliefs. 
If,  indeed,  it  had  not  possessed  the  charm  of  a  new  sensation,  of  a 
delicious  freedom,  of  an  unknown  adventure,  it  would  never  have 
conquered  the  European  world.  There  are  only  a  few  in  that 
world  who  have  in  them  the  stuff  of  moral  athletes;  there  are 
many  who  respond  to  the  attraction  of  romance. 

The  Christians  rejected  the  grosser  forms  of  sexual  indul- 
gence, but  in  doing  so  they  entered  with  a  more  delicate  ardor 
into  the  more  refined  forms  of  sexual  intimacy.     They  cultivated 


154  PSYCHOLOGY    OF   SEX. 

a  relationship  of  brothers  and  sisters  to  each  other,  they  kissed 
one  another;  at  one  time,  in  the  spiritual  orgy  of  baptism,  they 
were  not  ashamed  to  adopt  complete  nakedness.1 

A  very  instructive  picture  of  the  forms  which  chastity 
assumed  among  the  early  Christians  is  given  us  in  the  treatise  of 
Chrysostom  Against  Those  who  Keep  Virgins  in  their  Houses. 
Our  fathers,  Chrysostom  begins,  only  knew  two  forms  of  sexual 
intimacy,  marriage  and  fornication.  Now  a  third  form  has 
appeared :  men  introduce  young  girls  into  their  houses  and  keep 
them  there  permanently,  respecting  their  virginity.  "What," 
Chrysostom  asks,  "is  the  reason?  It  seems  to  me  that  life  in 
common  with  a  woman  is  sweet,  even  outside  conjugal  union  and 
fleshly  commerce.  That  is  my  feeling ;  and  perhaps  it  is  not  my 
feeling  alone;  it  may  also  be  that  of  these  men.  They  would 
not  hold  their  honor  so  cheap  nor  give  rise  to  such  scandals  if 
this  pleasure  were  not  violent  and  tyrannical.  .  .  .  That 
there  should  really  be  a  pleasure  in  this  which  produces  a  love 
more  ardent  than  conjugal  union  may  surprise  you  at  first.  But 
when  I  give  you  the  proofs  you  will  agree  that  it  is  so."  The 
absence  of  restraint  to  desire  in  marriage,  he  continues,  often 
leads  to  speedy  disgust,  and  even  apart  from  this,  sexual  inter- 
course, pregnancy,  delivery,  lactation,  the  bringing  up  of  children, 
and  all  the  pains  and  anxieties  that  accompany  these  things  soon 
destroy  youth  and  dull  the  point  of  pleasure.  The  virgin  is  free 
from  these  burdens.  She  retains  her  vigor  and  youthfulness,  and 
even  at  the  age  of  forty  may  rival  the  young  nubile  girl.  "A 
double  ardor  thus  burns  in  the  heart  of  him  who  lives  with  her, 
and  the  gratification  of  desire  never  extinguishes  the  bright 
flame  which  ever  continues  to  increase  in  strength."  Chrysostom 
describes  minutely  all  the  little  cares  and  attentions  which  the 
modern  girls  of  his  time  required,  and  which  these  men  delighted 
to  expend  on  their  virginal  sweethearts  whether  in  public  or  in 
private.  He  cannot  help  thinking,  however,  that  the  man  who 
lavishes  kisses  and  caresses  on  a  woman  whose  virginity  he  retains 

i  At  night,  in  the  baptistry,  with  lamps  dimly  burning,  the  women 
were  stripped  even  of  their  tunics,  plunged  three  times  in  the  pool,  then 
anointed,  dressed  in  white,  and  kissed. 


THE    FUNCTION    OF    CHASTITY.  155 

is  putting  himself  somewhat  in  the  position  of  Tantalus.  But 
this  new  refinement  of  tender  chastity,  which  came  as  a  delicious 
discovery  to  the  early  Christians  who  had  resolutely  thrust  away 
the  licentiousness  of  the  pagan  world,  was  deeply  rooted,  as  we 
discover  from  the  frequency  with  which  the  grave  Fathers  of  the 
Church,  apprehensive  of  scandal,  felt  called  upon  to  reprove  it, 
though  their  condemnation  is  sometimes  not  without  a  trace  of 
secret  sympathy.1 

There  was  one  form  in  which  the  new  Christian  chastity 
flourished  exuberantly  and  unchecked:  it  conquered  literature. 
The  most  charming,  and,  we  may  be  sure,  the  most  popular 
literature  of  the  early  Church  lay  in  the  innumerable  romances  of 
erotic  chastity — to  some  extent,  it  may  well  be,  founded  on  fact 
— which  are  embodied  to-day  in  the  Acta  Sanctorum.  We  can 
see  in  even  the  most  simple  and  non-miraculous  early  Christian 
records  of  the  martyrdom  of  women  that  the  writers  were  fully 
aware  of  the  delicate  charm  of  the  heroine  who,  like  Perpetua  at 
Carthage,  tossed  by  wild  cattle  in  the  arena,  rises  to  gather  her 
torn  garment  around  her  and  to  put  up  her  disheveled  hair.2  It 
was  an  easy  step  to  the  stories  of  romantic  adventure.  Among 
these  delightful  stories  I  may  refer  especially  to  the  legend  of 
Thekla,  which  has  been  placed,  incorrectly  it  may  be,  as  early  as 
the  first  century,  "The  Bride  and  Bridegroom  of  India"  in  Judas 
Thomas's  Acts,  "The  Virgin  of  Antioch"  as  narrated  by  St. 
Ambrose,  the  history  of  "Achilleus  and  ISTereus,"  "Mygdonia 
and  Karish,"  and  "Two  Lovers  of  Auvergne"  as  told  by  Gregory 
of  Tours.  Early  Christian  literature  abounds  in  the  stories  of 
lovers  who  had  indeed  preserved  their  chastity,  and  had  yet 
discovered  the  most  exquisite  secrets  of  love. 

1  Thus  Jerome,  in  his  letter  to  Eustoehium,  refers  to  those  couples 
who  "share  the  same  room,  often  even  the  same  bed,  and  call  us  sus- 
picious if  we  draw  any  conclusions,"  while  Cyprian  (Epistola,  86) 
is  unable  to  approve  of  those  men  he  hears  of,  one  a  deacon,  who  live 
in  familiar  intercourse  with  virgins,  even  sleeping  in  the  same  bed  with 
them,  for,  he  declares,  the  feminine  sex  is  weak  and  youth  is  wanton. 

2  Perpetua  {Acta  Sanctorum,  March  7)  is  termed  by  Hort  and 
Mayor  "that  fairest  flower  in  the  garden  of  post-Apostolic  Christen- 
dom." She  was  not,  however,  a  virgin,  but  a  young  mother  with  a  baby 
at  her  breast. 


156  PSYCHOLOGY    OF   SEX. 

Thekla's  day  is  the  twenty- third  of  September.  There  is  a  very 
good  Syriac  version  (by  Lipsius  and  others  regarded  as  more  primitive 
than  the  Greek  version)  of  the  Acts  of  Paul  and  Thekla  (see,  e.g., 
Wright's  Apocryphal  Acts ) .  These  Acts  belong  to  the  latter  part  of  the 
second  century.  The  story  is  that  Thekla,  refusing  to  yield  to  the  pas- 
sion of  the  high  priest  of  Syria,  was  put,  naked  but  for  a  girdle  {sub- 
ligaculum)  into  the  arena  on  the  back  of  a  lioness,  which  licked  her 
feet  and  fought  for  her  against  the  other  beasts,  dying  in  her  defense. 
The  other  beasts,  however,  did  her  no  harm,  and  she  was  finally  released. 
A  queen  loaded  her  with  money,  she  modified  her  dress  to  look  like  a 
man,  travelled  to  meet  Paul,  and  lived  to  old  age.  Sir  W.  M.  Ramsay 
has  written  an  interesting  study  of  these  Acts  [The  Church  in  tlie 
Roman  Empire,  Ch.  XVI).  He  is  of  opinion  that  the  Acts  are  based  on 
a  first  century  document,  and  is  able  to  disentangle  many  elements  of 
truth  from  the  story.  He  states  that  it  is  the  only  evidence  we  possess 
of  the  ideas  and  actions  of  women  during  the  first  century  in  Asia 
Minor,  where  their  position  was  so  high  and  their  influence  so  great. 
Thekla  represents  the  assertion  of  woman's  rights,  and  she  administered 
the  rite  of  baptism,  though  in  the  existing  versions  of  the  Acts  these 
features  are  toned  down  or  eliminated. 

Some  of  the  most  typical  of  these  early  Christian  romances  are 
described  as  Gnostical  in  origin,  with  something  of  the  germs  of  Mani- 
chffian  dualism  which  were  held  in  the  rich  and  complex  matrix  of 
Gnosticism,  while  the  spirit  of  these  romances  is  also  largely  Mon- 
tanist,  with  the  combined  chastity  and  ardor,  the  pronounced  feminine 
tone  due  to  its  origin  in  Asia  Minor,  which  marked  Montanism.  It  can- 
not be  denied,  however,  that  they  largely  passed  into  the  main  stream 
of  Christian  tradition,  and  form  an  essential  and  important  part  of 
that  tradition.  (Renan,  in  his  Marc-Aurele,  Chs.  IX  and  XV, 
insists  on  the  immense  debt  of  Christianity  to  Gnostic  and  Montanist 
contributions ) .  A  characteristic  example  is  the  story  of  "The  Betrothed 
of  India"  in  Judas  Thomas's  Acts  (Wright's  ApocryphoJ  Acts).  Judas 
Thomas  was  sold  by  his  master  Jesus  to  an  Indian  merchant  who 
required  a  carpenter  to  go  with  him  to  India.  On  disembarking  at  the 
city  of  Sandaruk  they  heard  the  sounds  of  music  and  singing,  and  learnt 
that  it  was  the  wedding-feast  of  the  King's  daughter,  which  all  must 
attend,  rich  and  poor,  slaves  and  freemen,  strangers  and  citizens. 
Judas  Thomas  went,  with  his  new  master,  to  the  banquet  and  reclined 
with  a  garland  of  myrtle  placed  on  his  head.  When  a  Hebrew  flute- 
player  came  and  stood  over  him  and  played,  he  sang  the  songs  of  Christ, 
and  it  was  seen  that  he  was  more  beautiful  than  all  that  were  there 
and  the  King  sent  for  him  to  bless  the  young  couple  in  the  bridal  cham- 
ber. And  when  all  were  gone  out  and  the  door  of  the  bridal  chamber 
closed,  the  bridegroom  approached  the  bride,  and  saw,  as  it  were,  Judas 


THE  FUNCTION   OP   CHASTITY.  157 

Thomas  still  talking  with  her.  But  it  was  our  Lord  who  said  to  him, 
"I  am  not  Judas,  but  his  brother."  And  our  Lord  sat  down  on  the  bed 
beside  the  young  people  and  began  to  say  to  them:  "Remember,  my 
children,  what  my  brother  spake  with  you,  and  know  to  whom  he  com- 
mitted you,  and  know  that  if  ye  preserve  yourselves  from  this  filthy 
intercourse  ye  become  pure  temples,  and  are  saved  from  afflictions  mani- 
fest and  hidden,  and  from  the  heavy  care  of  children,  the  end  whereof 
is  bitter  sorrow.  For  their  sakes  ye  will  become  oppressors  and  rob- 
bers, and  ye  will  be  grievously  tortured  for  their  injuries.  For  children 
are  the  cause  of  many  pains;  either  the  King  falls  upon  them  or  a 
demon  lays  hold  of  them,  or  paralysis  befalls  them.  And  if  they  be 
healthy  they  come  to  ill,  either  by  adultery,  or  theft,  or  fornication,  or 
covetousness,  or  vain-glory.  But  if  ye  will  be  persuaded  by  me,  and 
keep  yourselves  purely  unto  God,  ye  shall  have  living  children  to  whom 
not  one  of  these  blemishes  and  hurts  cometh  nigh;  and  ye  shall  be 
without  care  and  without  grief  and  without  sorrow,  and  ye  shall  hope 
for  the  time  when  ye  shall  see  the  true  wedding-feast."  The  young 
couple  were  persuaded,  and  refrained  from  lust,  and  our  Lord  vanished. 
And  in  the  morning,  when  it  was  dawn,  the  King  had  the  table  fur- 
nished early  and  brought  in  before  the  bridegroom  and  bride.  And  he 
found  them  sitting  the  one  opposite  the  other,  and  the  face  of  the  bride 
was  uncovered  and  the  bridegroom  was  very  cheerful.  The  mother  of 
the  bride  saith  to  her:  "Why  art  thou  sitting  thus,  and  art  not 
ashamed,  but  art  as  if,  lo,  thou  wert  married  a  long  time,  and  for  many 
a  day?"  And  her  father,  too,  said:  "Is  it  thy  great  love  for  thy  hus- 
band that  prevents  thee  from  even  veiling  thyself?"  And  the  bride 
answered  and  said:  "Truly,  my  father,  I  am  in  great  love,  and  am 
praying  to  my  Lord  that  I  may  continue  in  this  love  which  I  have 
experienced  this  night.  I  am  not  veiled,  because  the  veil  of  corruption 
is  taken  from  me,  and  I  am  not  ashamed,  because  the  deed  of  shame  has 
been  removed  far  from  me,  and  I  am  cheerful  and  gay,  and  despise  this 
deed  of  corruption  and  the  joys  of  this  wedding-feast,  because  I  am 
invited  to  the  true  wedding-feast.  I  have  not  had  intercourse  with  a 
husband,  the  end  whereof  is  bitter  repentance,  because  I  am  betrothed 
to  the  true  Husband."  The  bridegroom  answered  also  in  the  same  spirit, 
very  naturally  to  the  dismay  of  the  King,  who  sent  for  the  sorcerer 
whom  he  had  asked  to  bless  his  unlucky  daughter.  But  Judas  Thomas 
had  already  left  the  city  and  at  his  inn  the  King's  stewards  found  only 
the  flute-player,  sitting  and  weeping  because  he  had  not  taken  her  with 
him.  She  was  glad,  however,  when  she  heard  what  had  happened,  and 
hastened  to  the  young  couple,  and  lived  with  them  ever  afterwards. 
The  King  also  was  finally  reconciled,  and  all  ended  chastely,  but  happily. 
In  these  same  Judas  Thomas's  Acts,  which  are  not  later  than  the 
fourth  century,  we  find  (eighth  act)  the  story  of  Mygdonia  and  Karish. 


158  PSYCHOLOGY   OF    SEX. 

Mygdonia,  the  Avife  of  Karisli,  is  converted,  by  Thomas  and  flees  from 
her  husband,  naked  save  for  the  curtain  of  the  chamber  door  which  she 
has  wrapped  around  her,  to  her  old  nurse.  With  the  nurse  she  goes  to 
Thomas,  who  pours  holy  oil  over  her  head,  bidding  the  nurse  to  anoint 
her  all  over  with  it;  then  a  cloth  is  put  round  her  loins  and  he  bap- 
tizes her;  then  she  is  clothed  and  he  gives  her  the  sacrament.  The 
young  rapture  of  chastity  grows  lyrical  at  times,  and  Judas  Thomas 
breaks  out:  "Purity  is  the  athlete  who  is  not  overcome.  Purity  is  the 
truth  that  blencheth  not.  Purity  is  worthy  before  God  of  being  to  Him 
a  familiar  handmaiden.  Purity  is  the  messenger  of  concord  which 
bringeth  the  tidings  of  peace." 

Another  romance  of  chastity  is  furnished  by  the  episode  of 
Drusiana  in  The  History  of  the  Apostles  traditionally  attributed  to 
Abdias,  Bishop  of  Babylon  ( Bk.  v,  Ch.  IV,  et  seq. ) .  Drusiana  is  the 
wife  of  Andronicus,  and  is  so  pious  that  she  will  not  have  intercourse 
with  him.  The  youth  Callimachus  falls  madly  in  love  with  her,  and  his 
amorous  attempts  involve  many  exciting  adventures,  but  the  chastity 
of  Drusiana  is  finally  triumphant. 

A  characteristic  example  of  the  literature  we  are  here  concerned 
with  is  St.  Ambrose's  story  of  "The  Virgin  in  the  Brothel"  (narrated 
in  his  De  Virginians,  Migne's  edition  of  Ambrose's  Works,  vols,  iii-iv, 
p.  211).  A  certain  virgin,  St.  Ambrose  tells  us,  who  lately  lived  at 
Antioch,  was  condemned  either  to  sacrifice  to  the  gods  or  to  go  to  the 
brothel.  She  chose  the  latter  alternative.  But  the  first  man  who  came 
in  to  her  was  a  Christian  soldier  who  called  her  "sister,"  and  bade  her 
have  no  fear.  He  proposed  that  they  should  exchange  clothes.  This 
was  done  and  she  escaped,  while  the  soldier  was  led  away  to  death.  At 
the  place  of  execution,  however,  she  ran  up  and  exclaimed  that  it  was 
not  death  she  feared  but  shame.  He,  however,  maintained  that  he  had 
been  condemned  to  death  in  her  place.  Finally  the  crown  of  martyrdom 
for  which  they  contended  was  adjudged  to  both. 

We  constantly  observe  in  the  early  documents  of  this  romantic 
literature  of  chastity  that  chastity  is  insisted  on  by  no  means  chiefly 
because  of  its  rewards  after  death,  nor  even  because  the  virgin  who 
devotes  herself  to  it  secures  in  Christ  an  ever-young  lover  whose  golden- 
haired  beauty  is  sometimes  emphasized.  Its  chief  charm  is  represented 
as  lying  in  its  own  joy  and  freedom  and  the  security  it  involves  from 
all  the  troubles,  inconveniences  and  bondages  of  matrimony.  This  early 
Christian  movement  of  romantic  chastity  was  clearly,  in  large  measure, 
a  revolt  of  women  against  men  and  marriage.  This  is  well  brought  out 
in  the  instructive  story,  supposed  to  be  of  third  century  origin,  of  the 
eunuchs  Achilleus  and  Nereus,  as  narrated  in  the  Acta  Sanctorum,  May 
12th.  Achilleus  and  Nereus  were  Christian  eunuchs  of  the  bedchamber 
to  Domitia,  a  virgin  of  noble  birth,  related  to  the  Emperor  Domitian 


THE  FUNCTION   OF   CHASTITY.  159 

and  betrothed  to  Aurelian,  son  of  a  Consul.  One  day,  as  their  mistress 
was  putting  on  her  jewels  and  her  purple  garments  embroidered  with 
gold,  they  began  in  turn  to  talk  to  her  about  all  the  joys  and  advantages 
of  virginity,  as  compared  to  marriage  with  a  mere  man.  The  conversa- 
tion is  developed  at  great  length  and  with  much  eloquence.  Domitia 
was  finally  persuaded.  She  suffered  much  from  Aurelian  in  conse- 
quence, and  when  he  obtained  her  banishment  to  an  island  she  went 
thither  with  Achilleus  and  Nereus,  who  were  put  to  death.  Incident- 
ally, the  death  of  Felicula,  another  heroine  of  chastity,  is  described. 
When  elevated  on  the  rack  because  she  would  not  marry,  she  constantly 
refused  to  deny  Jesus,  whom  she  called  her  lover.  "Ego  non  nego 
amatorem  meum!" 

A  special  department  of  this  literature  is  concerned  with  stories 
of  the  conversions  or  the  penitence  of  courtesans.  St.  Martinianus,  for 
instance  (Feb.  13),  was  tempted  by  the  courtesan  Zoe,  but  converted 
her.  The  story  of  St.  Margaret  of  Cortona  ( Feb.  22 ) ,  a  penitent 
courtesan,  is  late,  for  she  belongs  to  the  thirteenth  century.  The  most 
delightful  document  in  this  literature  is  probably  the  latest,  the  four- 
teenth century  Italian  devotional  romance  called  The  Life  of  Saint  Mary 
Magdalen\,  commonly  associated  with  the  name  of  Frate  Domenico 
Cavalca.  (It  has  been  translated  into  English).  It  is  the  delicately 
and  deliciously  told  romance  of  the  chaste  and  passionate  love  of  the 
sweet  sinner,  Mary  Magdalene,  for  her  beloved  Master. 

As  time  went  on  the  insistence  on  the  joys  of  chastity  in  this  life 
became  less  marked,  and  chastity  is  more  and  more  regarded  as  a  state 
only  to  be  fully  rewarded  in  a  future  life.  Even,  however,  in  Gregory 
of  Tours's  charming  story  of  "The  Two  Lovers  of  Auvergne,"  in  which 
this  atttitude  is  clear,  the  pleasures  of  chaste  love  in  this  life  are 
brought  out  as  clearly  as  in  any  of  the  early  romances  (Eistoria  Fran- 
corum,  lib.  i,  cap.  XLII).  Two  senators  of  Auvergne  each  had  an  only 
child,  and  they  betrothed  them  to  each  other.  When  the  wedding  day 
came  and  the  young  couple  were  placed  in  bed,  the  bride  turned  to  the 
wall  and  wept  bitterly.  The  bridegroom  implored  her  to  tell  him  what 
was  the  matter,  and,  turning  towards  him,  she  said  that  if  she  were  to 
weep  all  her  days  she  could  never  wash  away  her  grief  for  she  had 
resolved  to  give  her  little  body  immaculate  to  Christ,  untouched  by  men, 
and  now  instead  of  immortal  roses  she  had  only  had  on  her  brow  faded 
roses,  which  deformed  rather  than  adorned  it,  and  instead  of  the  dowry 
of  Paradise  which  Christ  had  promised  her  she  had  become  the  consort 
of  a  merely  mortal  man.  She  deplored  her  sad  fate  at  considerable 
length  and  with  much  gentle  eloquence.  At  length  the  bridegroom, 
overcome  by  her  sweet  words,  felt  that  eternal  life  had  shone  before  him 
like  a  great  light,  and  declared  that  if  she  wished  to  abstain  from  carnal 
desires  he  was  of  the  same  mind.     She  was  grateful,  and  with  clasped 


160  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

hands  they  fell  asleep.  For  many  years  they  thus  lived  together, 
chastely  sharing  the  same  bed.  At  length  she  died  and  was  buried,  her 
lover  restoring  her  immaculate  to  the  hands  of  Christ.  Soon  after- 
wards he  died  also,  and  was  placed  in  a  separate  tomb.  Then  a  miracle" 
happened  which  made  manifest  the  magnitude  of  this  chaste  love,  for 
the  two  bodies  were  found  mysteriously  placed  together.  To  this  day, 
Gregory  concludes  (writing  in  the  sixth  century),  the  people  of  the 
place  call  them  "The  Two  Lovers." 

Although  Renan  (Marc-Aurele,  Ch.  XV)  briefly  called  attention  to 
the  existence  of  this  copious  early  Christian  literature  setting  forth  the 
romance  of  chastity,  it  seems  as  yet  to  have  received  little  or  no  study. 
It  is,  however,  of  considerable  importance,  not  merely  for  its  own  sake, 
but  on  account  of  its  psychological  significance  in  making  clear  the 
nature  of  the  motive  forces  which  made  chastity  easy  and  charming  to 
the  people  of  the  early  Christian  world,  even  when  it  involved  complete 
abstinence  from  sexual  intercourse.  The  early  Church  anathematized 
the  eroticism  of  the  Pagan  world,  and  exorcized  it  in  the  most  effectual 
way  by  setting  up  a  new  and  more  exquisite  eroticism  of  its  own. 

During  the  Middle  Ages  the  primitive  freshness  of  Christian 
chastity  began  to  lose  its  charm.  No  more  romances  of  chastity 
were  written,  and  in  actual  life  men  no  longer  sought  daring 
adventures  in  the  field  of  chastity.  So  far  as  the  old  ideals  sur- 
vived at  all  it  was  in  the  secular  field  of  chivalry.  The  last 
notable  figure  to  emulate  the  achievements  of  the  early  Christians 
was  Eobert  of  Arbrissel  in  Normandy. 

Robert  of  Arbrissel,  who  founded,  in  the  eleventh  century,  the 
famous  and  distinguished  Order  of  Fontevrault  for  women,  was  a  Breton. 
This  Celtic  origin  is  doubtless  significant,  for  it  may  explain  his  unfail- 
ing ardor  and  gaiety,  and  his  enthusiastic  veneration  for  womanhood. 
Even  those  of  his  friends  who  deprecated  what  they  considered  his  scan- 
dalous conduct  bear  testimony  to  his  unfailing  and  cheerful  tempera- 
ment, his  alertness  in  action,  his  readiness  for  any  deed  of  humanity, 
and  his  entire  freedom  from  severity.  He  attracted  immense  crowds  of 
people  of  all  conditions,  especially  women,  including  prostitutes,  and  his 
influence  over  women  was  great.  Once  he  went  into  a  brothel  to  warm 
his  feet,  and,  incidentally,  converted  all  the  women  there.  "Who  are 
you  ?"  asked  one  of  them,  "I  have  been  here  twenty-five  years  and  nobody 
has  ever  come  here  to  talk  about  God."  Robert's  relation  with  his  nuns 
at  Fontevrault  was  very  intimate,  and  he  would  often  sleep  with  them. 
This  is  set  forth  precisely  in  letters  written  by  friends  of  his,  bishops 
and  abbots,  one  of  whom  remarks  that  Robert  had  "discovered  a  new 


THE   FUNCTION   OF   CHASTITY.  161 

but  fruitless  form  of  martyrdom."  A  royal  abbess  of  Fontevrault  in 
the  seventeenth  century,  pretending  that  the  venerated  founder  of  the 
order  could  not  possibly  have  been  guilty  of  such  scandalous  conduct, 
and  that  the  letters  must  therefore  be  spurious,  had  the  originals 
destroyed,  so  far  as  possible.  The  Bollandists,  in  an  unscholarly  and 
incomplete  account  of  the  matter  (Acta  Sanctorum,  Feb.  25),  adopted 
this  view.  J.  von  Walter,  however,  in  a  recent  and  thorough  study  of 
Eobert  of  Arbrissel  (Die  Ersten  Wanderprediger  Frankreichs-,  Theil  I), 
shows  that  there  is  no  reason  whatever  to  doubt  the  authentic  and 
reliable  character  of  the  impugned  letters. 

The  early  Christian  legends  of  chastity  had,  however,  their 
successors.  Aucassin  et  Nicolette,  which  was  probably  written  in 
Northern  France  towards  the  end  of  the  twelfth  century,  is  above 
all  the  descendant  of  the  stories  in  the  Acta  Sanctorum  and  else- 
where. It  embodied  their  spirit  and  carried  it  forward,  uniting 
their  delicate  feeling  for  chastity  and  purity  with  the  ideal  of 
monogamic  love.  Aucassin  et  Nicolette  was  the  death-knell  of 
the  primitive  Christian  romance  of  chastity.  It  was  the  dis- 
covery that  the  chaste  refinements  of  delicacy  and  devotion  were 
possible  within  the  strictly  normal  sphere  of  sexual  love. 

There  were  at  least  two  causes  which  tended  to  extinguish 
the  primitive  Christian  attraction  to  chastity,  even  apart  from  the 
influence  of  the  Church  authorities  in  repressing  its  romantic 
manifestations.  In  the  first  place,  the  submergence  of  the  old 
pagan  world,  with  its  practice  and,  to  some  extent,  ideal  of 
sexual  indulgence,  removed  the  foil  which  had  given  grace  and 
delicacy  to  the  tender  freedom  of  the  young  Christians.  In  the 
second  place,  the  austerities  which  the  early  Christians  had 
gladly  practised  for  the  sake  of  their  soul's  health,  were  robbed 
of  their  charm  and  spontaneity  by  being  made  a  formal  part  of 
codes  of  punishment  for  sin,  first  in  the  Penitentials  and  after- 
wards at  the  discretion  of  confessors.  This,  it  may  be  added, 
was  rendered  the  more  necessary  because  the  ideal  of  Christian 
chastity  was  no  longer  largely  the  possession  of  refined  people 
who  had  been  rendered  immune  to  Pagan  license  by  being 
brought  up  in  its  midst,  and  even  themselves  steeped  in  it.  It 
was  clearly  from  the  first  a  serious  matter  for  the  violent  North 

Africans  to  maintain  the  ideal  of  chastity,  and  when  Christianity 

11 


162  PSYCHOLOGY    OF   SEX. 

spread  to  Northern  Europe  it  seemed  almost  a  hopeless  task  to 
acclimatize  its  ideals  among  the  wild  Germans.  Hereafter  it 
became  necessary  for  celibacy  to  be  imposed  on  the  regular  clergy 
by  the  stern  force  of  ecclesiastical  authority,  while  voluntary 
celibacy  was  only  kept  alive  by  a  succession  of  religious  enthus- 
iasts perpetually  founding  new  Orders.  An  asceticism  thus 
enforced  could  not  always  be  accompanied  by  the  ardent  exalta- 
tion necessary  to  maintain  it,  and  in  its  artificial  efforts  at  self- 
preservation  it  frequently  fell  from  its  insecure  heights  to  the 
depths  of  unrestrained  license.1  This  fatality  of  all  hazardous 
efforts  to  overpass  humanity's  normal  limits  begun  to  be  realized 
after  the  Middle  Ages  were  over  by  clear-sighted  thinkers.  "Qui 
veut  faire  l'ange,"  said  Pascal,  pungently  summing  up  this  view 
of  the  matter,  "fait  la  bete."  That  had  often  been  illustrated  in 
the  history  of  the  Church. 

The  Penitentials  began  to  come  into  use  in  the  seventh  century, 
and  became  of  wide  prevalence  and  authority  during  the  ninth  and 
tenth  centuries.  They  were  bodies  of  law,  partly  spiritual  and  partly 
secular,  and  were  thrown  into  the  form  of  catalogues  of  offences  with 
the  exact  measure  of  penance  prescribed  for  each  offence.  They  repre- 
sented the  introduction  of  social  order  among  untamed  barbarians,  and 
were  codes  of  criminal  law  much  more  than  part  of  a  system  of  sacra- 
mental confession  and  penance.  In  France  and  Spain,  where  order  on  a 
Christian  basis  already  existed,  they  were  little  needed.  They  had  their 
origin  in  Ireland  and  England,  and  especially  flourished  in  Germany; 
Charlemagne  supported  them  (see,  e.g.,  Lea,  History  of  Auricular  Con- 
fession, vol.  ii,  p.  96,  also  Ch.  XVII;  Hugh  Williams,  edition  of  Gildas, 
Part  II,  Appendix  3;  the  chief  Penitentials  are  reproduced  in  Wasser- 
schleben's  Bussordnungen) . 

In  1216  the  Lateran  Council,  under  Innocent  III,  made  confession 
obligatory.  The  priestly  prerogative  of  regulating  the  amount  of  pen- 
ance according  to  circumstances,  with  greater  flexibility  than  the  rigid 
Penitentials  admitted,  was  first  absolutely  asserted  by  Peter  of  Poitiers. 

1  The  strength  of  early  Christian  asceticism  lay  in  its  spontaneous 
and  voluntary  character.  When,  in  the  ninth  century,  the  Carlovingians 
attempted  to  enforce  monastic  and  clerical  celibacy,  the  result  was  a 
great  outburst  of  unchastity  and  crime ;  nunneries  became  brothels,  nuns 
were  frequently  guilty  of  infanticide,  monks  committed  unspeakable 
abominations,  the  regular  clergy  formed  incestuous  relations  with  their 
nearest  female  relatives  (Lea,  History  of  Sacerdotal  Celibacy,  vol.  i,  pp. 
155  et  seq.). 


THE   FUNCTION   OF    CHASTITY.  163 

Then  Alain  de  Lille  threw  aside  the  Penitentials  as  obsolete,  and  declared 
that  the  priest  himself  must  inquire  into  the  circumstances  of  each  sin 
and  weigh  precisely  its  guilt  (Lea,  op.  cit.,  vol.  ii,  p.  171). 

Long  before  this  period,  however,  the  ideals  of  chastity,  so  far  as 
they  involved  any  considerable  degree  of  continence,  although  they  had 
become  firmly  hardened  into  the  conventional  traditions  and  ideals  of 
the  Christian  Church,  had  ceased  to  have  any  great  charm  or  force  for 
the  people  living  in  Christendom.  Among  the  Northern  barbarians,  with 
different  traditions  of  a  more  vigorous  and  natural  order  behind  them, 
the  demands  of  sex  were  often  frankly  exhibited.  The  monk  Ordericus 
Vitalis,  in  the  eleventh  century,  notes  what  he  calls  the  "lasciviousness" 
of  the  wives  of  the  Norman  conquerors  of  England  who,  when  left  alone 
at  home,  sent  messages  that  if  their  husbands  failed  to  return  speedily 
they  would  take  new  ones.  The  celibacy  of  the  clergy  was  only  estab- 
lished with  the  very  greatest  difficulty,  and  when  it  was  established, 
priests  became  unchaste.  Archbishop  Odo  of  Rouen,  in  the  thirteenth 
century,  recorded  in  the  diary  of  his  diocesan  visitations  that  there  was 
one  unchaste  priest  in  every  five  parishes,  and  even  as  regards  the  Italy 
of  the  same  period  the  friar  Salimbene  in  his  remarkable  autobigraphy 
shows  how  little  chastity  was  regarded  in  the  religious  life.  Chastity 
could  now  only  be  maintained  by  force,  usually  the  moral  force  of 
ecclesiastical  authority,  which  was  itself  undermined  by  unchastity,  but 
sometimes  even  physical  force.  It  was  in  the  thirteenth  century,  in  the 
opinion  of  some,  that  the  girdle  of  chastity  (cingula  castitatis)  first 
begins  to  appear,  but  the  chief  authority,  Caufeynon  (La  Ceinture  de 
Chastete,  1904)  believes  it  only  dates  from  the  Renaissance  (Schultz, 
Das  Hofische  Leben  sur  Zeit  der  Minnesanger,  vol.  i,  p.  595;  Dufour, 
Eistoire  de  la  Prostitution,  vol.  v,  p.  272;  Krauss,  Anthropophyteia, 
vol.  iii,  p.  247) .  In  the  sixteenth  century  convents  were  liable  to  become 
almost  brothels,  as  we  learn  on  the  unimpeachable  authority  of  Burchard, 
a  Pope's  secretary,  in  his  Diarium,  edited  by  Thuasne  who  brings 
together  additional  authorities  for  this  statement  in  a  footnote  (vol.  ii, 
p.  79)  ;  that  they  remained  so  in  the  eighteenth  century  we  see  clearly 
in  the  pages  of  Casanova's  Memoires,  and  in  many  other  documents  of 
the  period. 

The  Benaissance  and  the  rise  of  humanism  undoubtedly 
affected  the  feeling  towards  asceticism  and  chastity.  On  the  one 
hand  a  new  and  ancient  sanction  was  found  for  the  disregard  of 
virtues  which  men  began  to  look  upon  as  merely  monkish,  and  on 
the  other  hand  the  finer  spirits  affected  by  the  new  movement 
began  to  realize  that  chastity  might  be  better  cultiyated  and 
observed  by  those  who  were  free  to  do  as  they  would  than  by 


164  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   SEX. 

those  who  were  under  the  compulsion  of  priestly  authority. 
That  is  the  feeling  that  prevails  in  Montaigne,  and  that  is  the 
idea  of  Eabelais  when  he  made  it  the  only  rule  of  his  Abbey  of 
Theleme :  "Fay  ce  que  vouldras." 

A  little  later  this  doctrine  was  repeated  in  varying  tones  by  many 
writers  more  or  less  tinged  by  the  culture  brought  into  fashion  by  the 
Renaissance.  "As  long  as  Danae  was  free,"  remarks  Ferrand  in  his  six- 
teenth century  treatise,  Be  la  Haladie  d' Amour,  "she  was  chaste."  And 
Sir  Kenelm  Digby,  the  latest  representative  of  the  Renaissance  spirit, 
insists  in  his  Private  Memoirs  that  the  liberty  which  Lycurgus,  "the 
wisest  human  law-maker  that  ever  was,"  gave  to  women  to  communicate 
their  bodies  to  men  to  whom  they  were  drawn  by  noble  affection,  and 
the  hope  of  generous  offspring,  was  the  true  cause  why  "real  chastity 
flourished  in  Sparta  more  than  in  any  other  part  of  the  world." 

In  Protestant  countries  the  ascetic  ideal  of  chastity  was  still 
further  discredited  by  the  Eeformation  movement  which  was  in 
considerable  part  a  revolt  against  compulsory  celibacy.  Eeligion 
was  thus  no  longer  placed  on  the  side  of  chastity.  In  the 
eighteenth  century,  if  not  earlier,  the  authority  of  Nature  also 
was  commonly  invoked  against  chastity.  It  has  thus  happened 
that  during  the  past  two  centuries  serious  opinion  concerning 
chastity  has  only  been  partially  favorable  to  it.  It  began  to  be 
felt  that  an  unhappy  and  injurious  mistake  had  been  perpetrated 
by  attempting  to  maintain  a  lofty  ideal  which  encouraged 
hypocrisy.  "The  human  race  would  gain  much/'  as  Senancour 
wrote  early  in  the  nineteenth  century  in  his  remarkable  book  on 
love,  "if  virtue  were  made  less  laborious.  The  merit  would  not 
be  so  great,  but  what  is  the  use  of  an  elevation  which  can  rarely 
be  sustained?"1 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  undue  discredit  into  which 
the  idea  of  chastity  began  to  fall  from  the  eighteenth  century 


1  Senancour,  De  V Amour,  vol.  ii,  p.  233.  Islam  has  placed  much 
less  stress  on  chastity  than  Christianity,  but  practically,  it  would  appear, 
there  is  often  more  regard  for  chastity  under  Mohammedan  rule  than 
under  Christian  rule.  Thus  it  is  stated  by  "Viator"  (Fortnightly 
Review,  Dec,  1908)  that  formerly,  under  Turkish  Moslem  rule,  it  was 
impossible  to  buy  the  virtue  of  women  in  Bosnia,  but  that  now,  under 
the  Christian  rule  of  Austria,  it  is  everywhere  possible  to  buy  women 
near  the  Austrian  frontier. 


THE  FUNCTION   OF   CHASTITY.  165 

onwards  was  largely  due  to  the  existence  of  that  merely  external 
and  conventional  physical  chastity  which  was  arbitrarily  enforced 
so  far  as  it  could  be  enforced, — and  is  indeed  in  some  degree  still 
enforced,  nominally  or  really, — upon  all  respectable  women  out- 
side marriage.  The  conception  of  the  physical  virtue  of  vir- 
ginity, had  degraded  the  conception  of  the  spiritual  virtue  of 
chastity.  A  mere  routine,  it  was  felt,  prescribed  to  a  whole  sex, 
whether  they  would  or  not,  could  never  possess  the  beauty  and 
charm  of  a  virtue.  At  the  same  time  it  began  to  be  realized  that, 
as  a  matter  of  fact,  the  state  of  compulsory  virginity  is  not 
only  not  a  state  especially  favorable  to  the  cultivation  of  real 
virtues,  but  that  it  is  bound  up  with  qualities  which  are  no  longer 
regarded  as  of  high  value.1 

"How  arbitrary,  artificial,  contrary  to  Nature,  is  the  life  now 
imposed  upon  women  in  this  matter  of  chastity!"  wrote  James  Hinton 
forty  years  ago.  "Think  of  that  line:  'A  woman  who  deliberates  is 
lost.'  We  make  danger,  making  all  womanhood  hang  upon  a  point  like 
this,  and  surrounding  it  with  unnatural  and  preternatural  dangers. 
There  is  a  wanton  unreason  embodied  in  the  life  of  woman  now;  the 
present  'virtue'  is  a  morbid  unhealthy  plant.  Nature  and  God  never 
poised  the  life  of  a  woman  upon  such  a  needle's  point.  The  whole  mod- 
ern idea  of  chastity  has  in  it  sensual  exaggeration,  surely,  in  part, 
remaining  to  us  from  other  times,  with  what  was  good  in  it  in  great 
part  gone." 

"The  whole  grace  of  virginity,"  wrote  another  philosopher,  Guyau, 


1  The  basis  of  this  feeling  was  strengthened  when  it  was  shown  by 
scholars  that  the  physical  virtue  of  "virginity"  had  been  masquerading 
under  a  false  name.  To  remain  a  virgin  seems  to  have  meant  at  the 
first,  among  peoples  of  early  Aryan  culture,  by  no  means  to  take  a  vow 
of  chastity,  but  to  refuse  to  submit  to  the  yoke  of  patriarchal  marriage. 
The  women  who  preferred  to  stand  outside  marriage  were  "virgins," 
even  though  mothers  of  large  families,  and  iEschylus  speaks  of  tha 
Amazons  as  "virgins,"  while  in  Greek  the  child  of  an  unmarried  girl  was 
always  "the  virgin's  son."  The  history  of  Artemis,  the  most  primitive 
of  Greek  deities,  is  instructive  from  this  point  of  view.  She  was_  origin- 
ally only  virginal  in  the  sense  that  she  rejected  marriage,  being  the 
goddess  of  a  nomadic  and  matriarchal  hunting  people  who  had  not  yet 
adopted  marriage,  and  she  was  the  goddess  of  childbirth,  worshipped 
with  orgiastic  dances  and  phallic  emblems.  It  was  by  a  late  transfor- 
mation that  Artemis  became  the  goddess  of  chastity  (Farnell,  Cults  of 
the  Greek  States,  vol.  ii,  pp.  442  et  seq.;  Sir  W.  M.  Ramsay,  Cities  of 
Phrygia,  vol.  i,  p.  96 ;  Paul  Lafargue,  "Les  Mythes  Historiques,"  Revue 
des  Idees,  Dec,  1904). 


166  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   SEX. 

"is  ignorance.  Virginity,  like  certain  fruits,  can  only  be  preserved  by 
a  process  of  desiccation." 

Merimee  pointed  out  the  same  desiccating  influence  of  virginity. 
In  a  letter  dated  1859  he  wrote:  "I  think  that  nowadays  people  attach 
far  too  much  importance  to  chastity.  Not  that  I  deny  that  chastity  is 
a  virtue,  but  there  are  degrees  in  virtues  just  as  there  are  in  vices.  It 
seems  to  be  absurd  that  a  woman  should  be  banished  from  society  for 
having  had  a  lover,  while  a  woman  who  is  miserly,  double-faced  and 
spiteful  goes  everywhere.  The  morality  of  this  age  is  assuredly  not  that 
which  is  taught  in  the  Gospel.  In  my  opinion  it  is  better  to  love  too 
much  than  not  enough.  Nowadays  dry  hearts  are  stuck  up  on  a  pin- 
nacle" (Revue  des  Deux  Mondes,  April,  1896). 

Dr.  H.  Paul  has  developed  an  allied  point.  She  writes:  "There 
are  girls  who,  even  as  children,  have  prostituted  themselves  by  masturba- 
tion and  lascivious  thoughts.  The  purity  of  their  souls  has  long  been 
lost  and  nothing  remains  unknown  to  them,  but — they  have  preserved 
their  hymens!  That  is  for  the  sake  of  the  future  husband.  Lei  no  one 
dare  to  doubt  their  innocence  with  that  unimpeachable  evidence!  And 
if  another  girl,  who  has  passed  her  childhood  in  complete  purity,  now, 
with  awakened  senses  and  warm  impetuous  womanliness,  gives  herself 
to  a  man  in  love  or  even  only  in  passion,  they  all  stand  up  and  scream 
that  she  is  'dishonored!'  And,  not  least,  the  prostituted  girl  with  the 
hymen.  It  is  she  indeed  who  screams  loudest  and  throws  the  biggest 
stones.  Yet  the  'dishonored'  woman,  who  is  sound  and  wholesome,  need 
not  fear  to  tell  what  she  has  done  to  the  man  who  desires  her  in  mar- 
riage, speaking  as  one  human  being  to  another.  She  has  no  need  to 
blush,  she  has  exercised  her  human  rights,  and  no  reasonable  man  will 
on  that  account  esteem  her  the  less"  (Dr.  H.  Paul,  "Die  Uebersehatzung 
der  Jungfernschaft,"  GeschlecJit  und  Gesellschaft,  Bd.  ii,  p.  14,  1907). 

In  a  similar  spirit  writes  F.  Erhard  (Geschlecht  und  Gesellschaft, 
Bd.  i,  p.  408)  :  "Virginity  in  one  sense  has  its  worth,  but  in  the  ordi- 
nary sense  it  is  greatly  overestimated.  Apart  from  the  fact  that  a  girl 
who  possesses  it  may  yet  be  thoroughly  perverted,  this  overestimation 
of  virginity  leads  to  the  girl  who  is  without  it  being  despised,  and  has 
further  resulted  in  the  development  of  a  special  industry  for  the  prepara- 
tion, by  means  of  a  prudishly  cloistral  education,  of  girls  who  will  bring 
to  their  husbands  the  peculiar  dainty  of  a  bride  who  knows  nothing 
about  anything.  Naturally,  this  can  only  be  achieved  at  the  expense  of 
any  rational  education.  What  the  undeveloped  little  goose  may  turn 
into,  no  man  can  foresee." 

Freud  (Sexual-Prolleme,  March,  1908)  also  points  out  the  evil 
results  of  the  education  for  marriage  which  is  given  to  girls  on  the 
basis  of  this  ideal  of  virginity.  "Education  undertakes  the  task  of 
repressing  the  girl's  sensuality  until  the  time  of  betrothal.     It  not  only 


THE   FUNCTION    OF    CHASTITY.  167 

forbids  sexual  relations  and  sets  a  high  premium  on  innocence,  but  it 
also  withdraws  the  ripening  womanly  individuality  from  temptation, 
maintaining  a  state  of  ignorance  concerning  the  practical  side  of  the 
part  she  is  intended  to  play  in  life,  and  enduring  no  stirring  of  love 
which  cannot  lead  to  marriage.  The  result  is  that  when  she  is  suddenly 
permitted  to  fall  in  love  by  the  authority  of  her  elders,  the  girl  cannot 
bring  her  psychic  disposition  to  bear,  and  goes  into  marriage  uncertain 
of  her  own  feelings.  As  a  consequence  of  this  artificial  retardation  of 
the  function  of  love  she  brings  nothing  but  deception  to  the  husband 
who  has  set  all  his  desires  upon  her,  and  manifests  frigidity  in  her 
physical  relations  with  him." 

Senancour  (De  V Amour,  vol.  i,  p.  285)  even  believes  that,  when 
it  is  possible  to  leave  out  of  consideration  the  question  of  offspring,  not 
only  will  the  law  of  chastity  become  equal  for  the  two  sexes,  but  there 
will  be  a  tendency  for  the  situation  of  the  sexes  to  be,  to  some  extent, 
changed.  "Continence  becomes  a  counsel  rather  than  a  precept,  and  it 
iz  in  women  that  the  voluptuous  inclination  will  be  regarded  with  most 
indulgence.  Man  is  made  for  work;  he  only  meets  pleasure  in  passing; 
he  must  be  content  that  women  should  occupy  themselves  with  it  more 
than  he.  It  is  men  whom  it  exhausts,  and  men  must  always,  in  part, 
restrain  their  desires." 

As,  however,  we  liberate  ourselves  from  the  bondage  of  a 
compulsory  physical  chastity,  it  becomes  possible  to  rehabilitate 
chastity  as  a  virtue.  At  the  present  day  it  can  no  longer  be 
said  that  there  is  on  the  part  of  thinkers  and  moralists  any  active 
hostility  to  the  idea  of  chastity;  there  is,  on  the  contrary,  a 
tendency  to  recognize  the  value  of  chastity.  But  this  recognition 
has  been  accompanied  by  a  return  to  the  older  and  sounder  con- 
ception of  chastity.  The  preservation  of  a  rigid  sexual  ab- 
stinence, an  empty  virginity,  can  only  be  regarded  as  a  pseudo- 
chastity.  The  only  positive  virtue  which  Aristotle  could  have 
recognized  in  this  field  was  a  temperance  involving  restraint  of 
the  lower  impulses,  a  wise  exercise  and  not  a  non-exercise.1  The 
best  thinkers  of  the  Christian  Church  adopted  the  same  concep- 
tion ;  St.  Basil  in  his  important  monastic  rules  laid  no  weight  on 
self-discipline  as  an  end  in  itself,  but  regarded  it  as  an  instru- 
ment for  enabling  the  spirit  to  gain  power  over  the  flesh.  St. 
Augustine  declared  that  continence  is  only  excellent  when  prac- 


1  See,  e.g.,  Nicomachean  Ethics,  Bk.  iii,  Ch.  XIII. 


168  PSYCHOLOGY    OP    SEX. 

tised  in  the  faith  of  the  highest  good,1  and  he  regarded  chastity 
as  "an  orderly  movement  of  the  soul  subordinating  lower  things 
to  higher  things,  and  specially  to  be  manifested  in  conjugal 
relationships";  Thomas  Aquinas,  defining  chastity  in  much 
the  same  way,  defined  impurity  as  the  enjoyment  of  sexual 
pleasure  not  according  to  right  reason,  whether  as  regards  the 
object  or  the  conditions.2  But  for  a  time  the  voices  of  the  great 
moralists  were  unheard.  The  virtue  of  chastity  was  swamped  in 
the  popular  Christian  passion  for  the  annihilation  of  the  flesh, 
and  that  view  was,  in  the  sixteenth  century,  finally  consecrated 
by  the  Council  of  Trent,  which  formally  pronounced  an  anathema 
upon  anyone  who  should  declare  that  the  state  of  virginity  and 
celibacy  was  not  better  than  the  state  of  matrimony.  Nowadays 
the  pseudo-chastity  that  was  of  value  on  the  simple  ground  that 
any  kind  of  continence  is  of  higher  spiritual  worth  than  any 
kind  of  sexual  relationship  belongs  to  the  past,  except  for  those 
who  adhere  to  ancient  ascetic  creeds.  The  mystic  value  of  vir- 
ginity has  gone;  it  seems  only  to  arouse  in  the  modern  man's 
mind  the  idea  of  a  piquancy  craved  by  the  hardened  rake  ;3  it  is 
men  who  have  themselves  long  passed  the  age  of  innocence  who 
attach  so  much  importance  to  the  innocence  of  their  brides.  The 
conception  of  life-long  continence  as  an  ideal  has  also  gone;  at 
the  best  it  is  regarded  as  a  mere  matter  of  personal  preference. 
And  the  conventional  simulation  of  universal  chastity,  at  the 
bidding  of  respectability,  is  coming  to  be  regarded  as  a  hindrance 
rather  than  a  help  to  the  cultivation  of  any  real  chastity.4 

i  De  Civitate  Dei,  lib.  xv,  cap.  XX.  A  little  further  on  (lib.  xvi, 
cap.  XXV)  be  refers  to  Abraham  as  a  man  able  to  use  women  as  a  man 
should,  his  wife  temperately,  his  concubine  compliantly,  neither  immod- 
erately. 

2  Summa,  Migne's  edition,  vol.  iii,  qu.  154,  art  I. 

3  See  the  Study  of  Modesty  in  the  first  volume  of  these  Studies. 

4  The  majority  of  chaste  youths,  remarks  an  acute  critic  of  modern 
life  (Hellpach,  Nervositat  und  Kultur,  p.  175),  are  merely  actuated  by 
traditional  principles,  or  by  shyness,  fear  of  venereal  infections,  lack  of 
self-confidence,  want  of  money,  very  seldom  by  any  consideration  for  a 
future  wife,  and  that  indeed  would  be  a  tragi-comic  error,  for  a  woman 
lays  no  importance  on  intact  masculinity.  Moreover,  he  adds,  the  chaste 
man  is  unable  to  choose  a  wife  wisely,  and  it  is  among  teachers  and 
clergymen — the  chastest  class — that  most  unhappy  marriages  are  made. 
Milton  had  already  made  this  fact  an  argument  for  facility  of  divorce. 


THE   FUNCTION    OF    CHASTITY.  169 

The  chastity  that  is  regarded  by  the  moralist  of  to-day  as  a 
virtue  has  its  worth  by  no  means  in  its  abstinence.  It  is  not,  in 
St.  Theresa's  words,  the  virtue  of  the  tortoise  which  withdraws 
its  limbs  under  its  carapace.  It  is  a  virtue  because  it  is  a  dis- 
cipline in  self-control,  because  it  helps  to  fortify  the  character 
and  will,  and  because  it  is  directly  favorable  to  the  cultivation  of 
the  most  beautiful,  exalted,  and  effective  sexual  life.  So  viewed, 
chastity  may  be  opposed  to  the  demands  of  debased  mediaeval 
Catholicism,  but  it  is  in  harmony  with  the  demands  of  our 
civilized  life  to-day,  and  by  no  means  at  variance  with  the  re- 
quirements of  Nature. 

There  is  always  an  analogy  between  the  instinct  of  repro- 
duction and  the  instinct  of  nutrition.  In  the  matter  of  eating  it 
is  the  influence  of  science,  of  physiology,  which  has  finally  put 
aside  an  exaggerated  asceticism,  and  made  eating  "pure."  The 
same  process,  as  James  Hinton  well  pointed  out,  has  been  made 
possible  in  the  sexual  relationships;  "science  has  in  its  hands 
the  key  to  purity."1 

Many  influences  have,  however,  worked  together  to  favor  an 
insistence  on  chastity.  There  has,  in  the  first  place,  been  an 
inevitable  reaction  against  the  sexual  facility  which  had  come  to 
be  regarded  as  natural.  Such  facility  was  found  to  have  no 
moral  value,  for  it  tended  to  relaxation  of  moral  fibre  and  was 
unfavorable  to  the  finest  sexual  satisfaction.  It  could  not  even 
claim  to  be  natural  in  any  broad  sense  of  the  word,  for,  in  Nature 
generally,  sexual  gratification  tends  to  be  rare  and  difficult.2 
Courtship  is  arduous  and  long,  the  season  of  love  is  strictly 
delimited,  pregnancy  interrupts  sexual  relationships.  Even 
among  savages,  so  long  as  they  have  been  untainted  by  civiliza- 
tion, virility  is  usually  maintained  by  a  fine  asceticism;    the 


1  "In  eating,"  said  Hinton,  "we  have  achieved  the  task  of  combin- 
ing pleasure  with  an  absence  of  'lust.'  The  problem  for  man  and  woman 
is  so  to  use  and  possess  the  sexual  passion  as  to  make  it  the  minister 
to  higher  things,  with  no  restraint  on  it  but  that.  It  is  essentially  con- 
nected with  things  of  the  spiritual  order,  and  would  naturally  revolve 
round  them.     To  think  of  it  as  merely  bodily  is  a  mistake." 

2  See  "Analysis  of  the  Sexual  Impulse,"  and  Appendix,  "The  Sexual 
Instinct  in  Savages,"  in  vol.  iii  of  these  Studies. 


/ 


170  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   SEX. 

endurance  of  hardship,  self-control  and  restraint,  tempered  by 
rare  orgies,  constitute  a  discipline  which  covers  the  sexual  as 
well  as  every  other  department  of  savage  life.  To  preserve  the 
same  virility  in  civilized  life,  it  may  well  be  felt,  we  must 
deliberately  cultivate  a  virtue  which  under  savage  conditions  of 
life  is  natural.1 

The  influence  of  Nietzsche,  direct  and  indirect,  has  been  on 
the  side  of  the  virtue  of  chastity  in  its  modern  sense.  The  com- 
mand: "Be  hard,"  as  Nietzsche  used  it,  was  not  so  much  an 
injunction  to  an  unfeeling  indifference  towards  others  as  an 
appeal  for  a  more  strenuous  attitude  towards  one's  self,  the  cul- 
tivation of  a  self-control  able  to  gather  up  and  hold  in  the  forces 
of  the  soul  for  expenditure  on  deliberately  accepted  ends.  "A 
relative  chastity,"  he  wrote,  "a  fundamental  and  wise  foresight 
in  the  face  of  erotic  things,  even  in  thought,  is  part  of  a  fine 
reasonableness  in  life,  even  in  richly  endowed  and  complete 
natures/'2  In  this  matter  Nietzsche  is  a  typical  representative 
of  the  modern  movement  for  the  restoration  of  chastity  to  its 
proper  place  as  a  real  and  beneficial  virtue,  and  not  a  mere  empty 
convention.  Such  a  movement  could  not  fail  to  make  itself  felt, 
for  all  that  favors  facility  and  luxurious  softness  in  sexual 
matters  is  quickly  felt  to  degrade  character  as  well  as  to  diminish 
the  finest  erotic  satisfaction.  For  erotic  satisfaction,  in  its 
highest  planes,  is  only  possible  when  we  have  secured  for  the 
sexual  impulse  a  high  degree  of  what  Colin  Scott  calls  "irradia- 
tion," that  is  to  say  a  wide  diffusion  through  the  whole  of  the 
psychic  organism.  And  that  can  only  be  attained  by  placing 
impediments  in  the  way  of  the  swift  and  direct  gratification  of 
sexual  desire,  by  compelling  it  to  increase  its  force,  to  take  long 
circuits,  to  charge  the  whole  organism  so  highly  that  the  final 
climax  of  gratified  love  is  not  the  trivial  detumescence  of  a  petty 
desire  but  the  immense  consummation  of  a  longing  in  which  the 
whole  soul  as  well  as  the  whole  body  has  its  part.     "Only  the 


1 1  have  elsewhere  discussed  more  at  length  the  need  in  modern 
civilized  life  of  a  natural  and  sincere  asceticism  (see  Affirmations,  1898) 
"St.  Francis  and  Others." 

2  Der  Wille  zur  Macht,  p.  392. 


THE   FUNCTION   OF   CHASTITY.  171 

chaste  can  be  really  obscene/'  said  Huysmans.  And  on  a  higher 
plane,  only  the  chaste  can  really  love. 

"Physical  purity,"  remarks  Hans  Menjago  ("Die  Ueberschatzung 
der  Physischen  Reinheit,"  Geschlecht  und  Gesellschaft,  vol.  ii,  Part 
VIII)  "was  originally  valued  as  a  sign  of  greater  strength  of  will  and 
firmness  of  character,  and  it  marked  a  rise  above  primitive  conditions. 
This  purity  was  difficult  to  preserve  in  those  unsure  days;  it  was  rare 
and  unusual.  From  this  rarity  rose  the  superstition  of  supernatural 
powc.  i2siding  in  the  virgin.  But  this  has  no  meaning  as  soon  as  such 
purity  becomes  general  and  a  specially  conspicuous  degree  of  firmness  of 

character    is    no    longer    needed    to    maintain    it Physical 

purity  can  only  possess  value  when  it  is  the  result  of  individual  strength 
of  character,  and  not  when  it  is  the  result  of  compulsory  rules  of 
morality." 

Konrad  Holler,  who  has  given  special  attention  to  the  sexual  ques- 
tion in  schools,  remarks  in  relation  to  physical  exercise:  "The  greatest 
advantage  of  physical  exercises,  however,  is  not  the  development  of  the 
active  and  passive  strength  of  the  body  and  its  skill,  but  the  establish- 
ment and  fortification  of  the  authority  of  the  will  over  the  body  and  its 
needs,  so  much  given  up  to  indolence.  He  who  has  learnt  to  endure  and 
overcome,  for  the  sake  of  a  definite  aim,  hunger  and  thirst  and  fatigue, 
will  be  the  better  able  to  withstand  sexual  impulses  and  the  temptation 
to  gratify  them,  when  better  insight  and  aesthetic  feeling  have  made 
clear  to  him,  as  one  used  to  maintain  authority  over  his  body,  that  to 
yield  would  be  injurious  or  disgraceful"  (K.  Holler,  "Die  Aufgabe  der 
Volksschule,"  Sexualpadagogilc,  p.  70).  Professor  Schafenacker  {id.,  p. 
102),  who  also  emphasizes  the  importance  of  self-control  and  self-re- 
straint, thinks  a  youth  must  bear  in  mind  his  future  mission,  as  citizen 
and  father  of  a  family. 

A  subtle  and  penetrative  thinker  of  to-day,  Jules  de  Gaultier, 
writing  on  morals  without  reference  to  this  specific  question,  has  dis- 
cussed what  new  internal  inhibitory  motives  we  can  appeal  to  in 
replacing  the  old  external  inhibition  of  authority  and  belief  which  is 
now  decayed.  He  answers  that  the  state  of  feeling  on  which  old  faiths 
were  based  still  persists.  "May  not,"  he  asks,  "the  desire  for  a  thing 
that  we  love  and  wish  for  beneficently  replace  the  belief  that  a  thing 
is  by  divine  will,  or  in  the  nature  of  things?  Will  not  the  presence  of 
a  bridle  on  the  frenzy  of  instinct  reveal  itself  as  a  useful  attitude  adopted 
by  instinct  itself  for  its  own  conservation,  as  a  symptom  of  the  force 
and  health  of  instinct?  Is  not  empire  over  oneself,  the  power  of  reg- 
ulating one's  acts,  a  mark  of  superiority  and  a  motive  for  self-esteem? 
Will  not  this  joy  of  pride  have  the  same  authority  in  preserving  the 


172  PSYCHOLOGY    OF   SEX. 

instincts  as  was  once  possessed  by  religious  fear  and  the  pretended 
imperatives  of  reason?"  (Jules  de  Gaultier,  La  Dependance  de  la  Morale 
et  rindependance  des  Mceurs,  p.  153.) 

H.  G.  Wells  (in  A  Modem  Utopia),  pointing  out  the  importance 
of  chastity,  though  rejecting  celibacy,  invokes,  like  Jules  de  Gaultier, 
the  motive  of  pride.  "Civilization  has  developed  far  more  rapidly  than 
man  has  modified.  Under  the  unnatural  perfection  of  security,  liberty, 
and  abundance  our  civilization  has  attained,  the  normal  untrained 
human  being  is  disposed  to  excess  in  almost  every  direction;  he  tends 
to  eat  too  much  and  too  elaborately,  to  drink  too  much,  to  become  lazy 
faster  than  his  work  can  be  reduced,  to  waste  his  interest  upon  displays, 
and  to  make  love  too  much  and  too  elaborately.  He  gets  out  of  train- 
ing, and  concentrates  upon  egoistic  or  erotic  broodings.  Our  founders 
organized  motives  from  all  sorts  of  sources,  but  I  think  the  chief  force 
to  give  men  self-control  is  pride.  Pride  may  not  be  the  noblest  thing 
in  the  soul,  but  it  is  the  best  king  there,  for  all  that.  They  looked  to 
it  to  keep  a  man  clean  and  sound  and  sane.  In  this  matter,  as  in  all 
matters  of  natural  desire,  they  held  no  appetite  must  be  glutted,  no 
appetite  must  have  artificial  whets,  and  also  and  equally  that  no 
appetite  should  be  starved.  A  man  must  come  from  the  table  satisfied, 
but  not  replete.  And,  in  the  matter  of  love,  a  straight  and  clean  desire 
for  a  clean  and  straight  fellow-creature  was  our  founders'  ideal.  They 
enjoined  marriage  between  equals  as  the  duty  to  the  race,  and  they 
framed  directions  of  the  precisest  sort  to  prevent  that  uxorious  insepar- 
ableness,  that  connubiality,  that  sometimes  reduces  a  couple  of  people  to 
something  jointly  less  than  either." 

With  regard  to  chastity  as  an  element  of  erotic  satisfaction, 
Edward  Carpenter  writes  [Love's  Coming  of  Age,  p.  11)  :  "There  is  a 
kind  of  illusion  about  physical  desire  similar  to  that  which  a  child 
suffers  from  when,  seeing  a  beautiful  flower,  it  instantly  snatches  the 
same,  and  destroys  in  a  few  moments  the  form  and  fragrance  which 
attracted  it.  He  only  gets  the  full  glory  who  holds  himself  back  a  little, 
and  truly  possesses,  who  is  willing,  if  need  be,  not  to  possess.  He  is 
indeed  a  master  of  life  who,  accepting  the  grosser  desires  as  they  come 
to  his  body,  and  not  refusing  them,  knows  how  to  transform  them  at 
will  into  the  most  rare  and  fragrant  flowers  of  human  emotion." 

Beyond  its  functions  in  building  up  character,  in  heighten- 
ing and  ennobling  the  erotic  life,  and  in  subserving  the  adequate 
fulfilment  of  family  and  social  duties,  chastity  has  a  more  special 
value  for  those  who  cultivate  the  arts.  We  may  not  always  be 
inclined  to  believe  the  writers  who  have  declared  that  their  verse 
alone  is  wanton,  but  their  lives  chaste.     It  is  certainly  true,  how- 


THE    FUNCTION    OF    CHASTITY.  173 

ever,  that  a  relationship  of  this  kind  tends  to  occur.  The  stuff 
of  the  sexual  life,  as  Nietzsche  says,  is  the  stuff  of  art;  if  it  is 
expended  in  one  channel  it  is  lost  for  the  other.  The  masters  of 
all  the  more  intensely  emotional  arts  have  frequently  cultivated 
a  high  degree  of  chastity.  This  is  notably  the  case  as  regards 
music;  one  thinks  of  Mozart,1  of  Beethoven,  of  Schubert,  and 
many  lesser  men.  In  the  case  of  poets  and  novelists  chastity  may 
usually  seem  to  be  less  prevalent  but  it  is  frequently  well-marked, 
and  is  not  seldom  disguised  by  the  resounding  reverberations 
which  even  the  slightest  love-episode  often  exerts  on  the  poetic 
organism.  Goethe's  life  seems,  at  a  first  glance,  to  be  a  long 
series  of  continuous  love-episodes.  Yet  when  we  remember  that 
it  was  the  very  long  life  of  a  man  whose  vigor  remained  until 
the  end,  that  his  attachments  long  and  profoundly  affected  his 
emotional  life  and  his  work,  and  that  with  most  of  the  women 
he  has  immortalized  he  never  had  actual  sexual  relationships  at 
all,  and  when  we  realize,  moreover,  that,  throughout,  he  accom- 
plished an  almost  inconceivably  vast  amount  of  work,  we  shall 
probably  conclude  that  sexual  indulgence  had  a  very  much  smaller 
part  in  Goethe's  life  than  in  that  of  many  an  average  man  on 
whom  it  leaves  no  obvious  emotional  or  intellectual  trace  what- 
ever. Sterne,  again,  declared  that  he  must  always  have  a 
Dulcinea  dancing  in  his  head,  yet  the  amount  of  his  intimate 
relations  with  women  appears  to  have  been  small.  Balzac  spent 
his  life  toiling  at  his  desk  and  carrying  on  during  many  years  a 
love  correspondence  with  a  woman  he  scarcely  ever  saw  and  at 
the  end  only  spent  a  few  months  of  married  life  with.  The  like 
experience  has  befallen  many  artistic  creators.  For,  in  the  words 
of  Landor,  "absence  is  the  invisible  and  incorporeal  mother  of 
ideal  beauty." 

We  do  well  to  remember  that,  while  the  auto-erotic  manifes- 
tations through  the  brain  are  of  infinite  variety  and  importance, 


1  At  the  age  of  twenty-five,  when  he  had  already  produced  much 
fine  work,  Mozart  wrote  in  his  letters  that  he  had  never  touched  a 
woman,  though  he  longed  for  love  and  marriage.  He  could  not  afford 
to  marry,  he  would  not  seduce  an  innocent  girl,  a  venial  relation  was 
repulsive  to  him. 


174  PSYCHOLOGY   OP   SEX. 

the  brain  and  the  sexual  organs  are  yet  the  great  rivals  in  using 
up  bodily  energy,  and  that  there  is  an  antagonism  between  ex- 
treme brain  vigor  and  extreme  sexual  vigor,  even  although  they 
may  sometimes  both  appear  at  different  periods  in  the  same 
individual.1  In  this  sense  there  is  no  paradox  in  the  saying  of 
Eamon  Correa  that  potency  is  impotence  and  impotence  potency, 
for  a  high  degree  of  energy,  whether  in  athletics  or  in  intellect  or 
in  sexual  activity,  is  unfavorable  to  the  display  of  energy  in 
other  directions.  Every  high  degree  of  potency  has  its  related 
impotencies. 

It  may  be  added  that  we  may  find  a  curiously  inconsistent  proof 
of  the  excessive  importance  attached  to  sexual  function  by  a  society 
which  systematically  tries  to  depreciate  sex,  in  the  disgrace  which  is 
attributed  to  the  lack  of  "virile"  potency.  Although  civilized  life  offers 
immense  scope  for  the  activities  of  sexually  impotent  persons,  the 
impotent  man  is  made  to  feel  that,  while  he  need  not  be  greatly  con- 
cerned if  he  suffers  from  nervous  disturbances  of  digestion,  if  he  should 
suffer  just  as  innocently  from  nervous  disturbances  of  the  sexual  im- 
pulse, it  is  almost  a  crime.  A  striking  example  of  this  was  shown,  a 
few  years  ago,  when  it  was  plausibly  suggested  that  Carlyle's  relations 
with  his  wife  might  best  be  explained  by  supposing  that  he  suffered  from 
some  trouble  of  sexual  potency.  At  once  admirers  rushed  forward  to 
"defend"  Carlyle  from  this  "disgraceful"  charge;  they  were  more 
shocked  than  if  it  had  been  alleged  that  he  was  a  syphilitic.  Yet 
impotence  is,  at  the  most,  an  infirmity,  whether  due  to  some  congenital 
anatomical  defect  or  to  a  disturbance  of  nervous  balance  in  the  delicate 
sexual  mechanism,  such  as  is  apt  to  occur  in  men  of  abnormally  sensi- 
tive temperament.  It  is  no  more  disgraceful  to  suffer  from  it  than  from 
dyspepsia,  with  which,  indeed,  it  may  be  associated.  Many  men  of 
genius  and  high  moral  character  have  been  sexually  deformed.  This 
was  the  case  with  Cowper  (though  this  significant  fact  is  suppressed  by 
his  biographers)  ;  Euskin  was  divorced  for  a  reason  of  this  kind;  and 
J.  S.  Mill,  it  is  said,  was  sexually  of  little  more  than  infantile  develop- 
ment. 

Up  to  this  point  I  have  been  considering  the  quality  of 
chastity  and  the  quality  of  asceticism  in  their  most  general  sense 


1  Reibmayr,  Die  Entioicklungsgeschichte  des  Talentes  und  Gerties., 
Bd.  i,  p.  487. 


THE   FUNCTION"   OF    CHASTITY.  175 

and  "without  any  attempt  at  precise  differentiation.1  But  if  we 
are  to  accept  these  as  modern  virtues,  valid  to-day,  it  is  necessary 
that  we  should  be  somewhat  more  precise  in  defining  them.  It 
seems  most  convenient,  and  most  strictly  accordant  also  with 
etymology,  if  we  agree  to  mean  by  asceticism  or  ascesis,  the 
athlete  quality  of  self-discipline,  controlling,  by  no  means  neces- 
sarily for  indefinitely  prolonged  periods,  the  gratification  of  the 
sexual  impulse.  By  chastity,  which  is  primarily  the  quality  of 
purity,  and  secondarily  that  of  holiness,  rather  than  of  abstinence, 
we  may  best  understand  a  due  proportion  between  erotic  claims 
and  the  other  claims  of  life.  "Chastity,"  as  Ellen  Key  well  says, 
"is  harmony  between  body  and  soul  in  relation  to  love/'  Thus 
comprehended,  asceticism  is  the  virtue  of  control  that  leads  up 
to  erotic  gratification,  and  chastity  is  the  virtue  which  exerts  its 
harmonizing  influence  in  the  erotic  life  itself. 

It  will  be  seen  that  asceticism  by  no  means  necessarily 
involves  perpetual  continence.  Properly  understood,  asceticism 
is  a  discipline,  a  training,  which  has  reference  to  an  end  not 
itself.  If  it  is  compulsorily  perpetual,  whether  at  the  dictates  of 
a  religious  dogma,  or  as  a  mere  fetish,  it  is  no  longer  on  a  natural 
basis,  and  it  is  no  longer  moral,  for  the  restraint  of  a  man  who 
has  spent  his  whole  life  in  a  prison  is  of  no  value  for  life.  If  it 
is  to  be  natural  and  to  be  moral  asceticism  must  have  an  end  out- 
side itself,  it  must  subserve  the  ends  of  vital  activity,  which 
cannot  be  subserved  by  a  person  who  is  engaged  in  a  perpetual 
struggle  with  his  own  natural  instincts.  A  man  may,  indeed,  as 
a  matter  of  taste  or  preference,  live  his  whole  life  in  sexual 
abstinence,  freely  and  easily,  but  in  that  case  he  is  not  an  ascetic, 
and  his  abstinence  is  neither  a  subject  for  applause  nor  for 
criticism. 


1  We  may  exclude  altogether,  it  is  scarcely  necessary  to  repeat,  the 
quality  of  virginity — that  is  to  say,  the  possession  of  an  intact  hymen — 
since  this  is  a  merely  physical  quality  with  no  necessary  ethical  rela- 
tionships. The  demand  for  virginity  in  women  is,  for  the  most  part, 
either  the  demand  for  a  better  marketable  article,  or  for  a  more  power- 
ful stimulant  to  masculine  desire.  Virginity  involves  no  moral  qualities 
in  its  possessor.  Chastity  and  asceticism,  on  the  other  hand,  are  mean- 
ingless terms,  except  as  demands  made  by  the  spirit  on  itself  or  on  the 
body  it  controls. 


176  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

In  the  same  way  chastity,  far  from  involving  sexual  ab- 
stinence, only  has  its  value  when  it  is  brought  within  the  erotic 
sphere.  A  purity  that  is  ignorance,  when  the  age  of  childish 
innocence  is  once  passed,  is  mere  stupidity;  it  is  nearer  to  vice 
than  to  virtue.  Nor  is  purity  consonant  with  effort  and  struggle ; 
in  that  respect  it  differs  from  asceticism.  "We  conquer  the 
bondage  of  sex,"  Rosa  Mayreder  says,  "by  acceptance,  not  by 
denials,  and  men  can  only  do  this  with  the  help  of  women."  The 
would-be  chastity  of  cold  calculation  is  equally  unbeautiful  and 
unreal,  and  without  any  sort  of  value.  A  true  and  worthy 
chastity  can  only  be  supported  by  an  ardent  ideal,  whether,  as 
among  the  early  Christians,  this  is  the  erotic  ideal  of  a  new 
romance,  or,  as  among  ourselves,  a  more  humanly  erotic  ideal. 
"Only  erotic  idealism,"  says  Ellen  Key,  "can  arouse  enthusiasm 
for  chastity."  Chastity  in  a  healthily  developed  person  can  thus 
be  beautifully  exercised  only  in  the  actual  erotic  life;  in  part  it 
is  the  natural  instinct  of  dignity  and  temperance;  in  part  it  is 
the  art  of  touching  the  things  of  sex  with  hands  that  remember 
their  aptness  for  all  the  fine  ends  of  life.  Upon  the  doorway  of 
entrance  to  the  inmost  sanctuary  of  love  there  is  thus  the  same 
inscription  as  on  the  doorway  to  the  Epidaurian  Sanctuary  of 
Aesculapius :     "None  but  the  pure  shall  enter  here." 

It  will  be  seen  that  the  definition  of  chastity  remains  somewhat 
lacking  in  precision.  That  is  inevitable.  We  cannot  grasp  purity 
tightly,  for,  like  snow,  it  will  merely  melt  in  our  hands.  "Purity  itself 
forbids  too  minute  a  system  of  rules  for  the  observance  of  purity,"  well 
says  Sidgwick  (Methods  of  Ethics,  Bk.  iii,  Ch.  IX).  Elsewhere  (op. 
cit.,  Bk.  iii,  Ch.  XI)  he  attempts  to  answer  the  question:  What  sexual 
relations  are  essentially  impure?  and  concludes  that  no  answer  is  pos- 
sible. "There  appears  to  be  no  distinct  principle,  having  any  claim  to 
self-evidence,  upon  which  the  question  can  be  answered  so  as  to  com- 
mand general  assent."  Even  what  is  called  "Free  Love,"  he  adds,  "in 
so  far  as  it  is  earnestly  advocated  as  a  means  to  a  completer  harmony 
of  sentiment  between  men  and  women,  cannot  be  condemned  as  impure, 
for  it  seems  paradoxical  to  distinguish  purity  from  impurity  merely  by 
less  rapidity  of  transition." 

Moll,  from  the  standpoint  of  medical  psychology,  reaches  the  same 
conclusion  as  Sidgwick  from  that  of  ethics.  In  a  report  on  the  "Value 
of  Chastity  for  Men,"  published  as  an  appendix  to  the  third  edition 


THE    FUNCTION    OF    CHASTITY.  177 

(1899)  of  his  Kontrare  geoeualempfmdimg,  the  distinguished  Berlin  phy- 
sician discusses  the  matter  with  much  vigorous  common  sense,  insisting 
that  "chaste  and  unchaste  are  relative  ideas."  We  must  not,  he  states, 
as  is  so  often  done,  identify  "chaste"  with  "sexually  abstinent."  He 
adds  that  we  are  not  justified  in  describing  all  extra-marital  sexual 
intercourse  as  unchaste,  for,  if  we  do  so,  we  shall  be  compelled  to 
regard  nearly  all  men,  and  some  very  estimable  women,  as  unchaste. 
He  rightly  insists  that  in  this  matter  we  must  apply  the  same  rule  to 
women  as  to  men,  and  he  points  out  that  even  when  it  involves  what 
may  be  technically  adultery  sexual  intercourse  is  not  necessarily  un- 
chaste. He  takes  the  case  of  a  girl  who,  at  eighteen,  when  still  mentally 
immature,  is  married  to  a  man  with  whom  she  finds  it  impossible  to 
live  and  a  separation  consequently  occurs,  although  a  divorce  may  be 
impossible  to  obtain.  If  she  now  falls  passionately  in  love  with  a  man 
her  love  may  be  entirely  chaste,  though  it  involves  what  is  technically 
adultery. 

In  thus  understanding  asceticism  and  chastity,  and  their 
beneficial  functions  in  life,  we  see  that  they  occupy  a  place  mid- 
way between  the  artificially  exaggerated  position  they  once  held 
and  that  to  which  they  were  degraded  by  the  inevitable  reaction 
of  total  indifference  or  actual  hostility  which  followed.  Asceti- 
cism and  chastity  are  not  rigid  categorical  imperatives ;  they  are 
useful  means  to  desirable  ends ;  they  are  wise  and  beautiful  arts. 
They  demand  our  estimation,  but  not  our  over-estimation.  For 
in  over-estimating  them,  it  is  too  often  forgotten,  we  over-esti- 
mate the  sexual  instinct.  The  instinct  of  sex  is  indeed  extremely 
important.  Yet  it  has  not  that  all-embracing  and  supereminent 
importance  which  some,  even  of  those  who  fight  against  it,  are 
accustomed  to  believe.  That  artificially  magnified  conception  of 
the  sexual  impulse  is  fortified  by  the  artificial  emphasis  placed 
upon  asceticism.  We  may  learn  the  real  place  of  the  sexual 
impulse  in  learning  how  we  may  reasonably  and  naturally  view 
the  restraints  on  that  impulse. 


CHAPTER  VI. 
THE  PROBLEM  OP  SEXUAL  ABSTINENCE. 

The  Influence  of  Tradition — The  Theological  Conception  of  Lust — 
Tendency  of  These  Influences  to  Degrade  Sexual  Morality — Their  Result 
in  Creating  the  Problem  of  Sexual  Abstinence — The  Protests  Against 
Sexual  Abstinence — Sexual  Abstinence  and  Genius — Sexual  Abstinence 
in  Women — The  Advocates  of  Sexual  Abstinence — Intermediate  Attitude 
— Unsatisfactory  Nature  of  the  Whole  Discussion — Criticism  of  the  Con- 
ception of  Sexual  Abstinence — Sexual  Abstinence  as  Compared  to 
Abstinence  from  Food — No  Complete  Analogy — The  Morality  of  Sexual 
Abstinence  Entirely  Negative — Is  It  the  Physician's  Duty  to  Advise 
Extra-Conjugal  Sexual  Intercourse? — Opinions  of  Those  Who  Affirm  or 
Deny  This  Duty — The  Conclusion  Against  Such  Advice — The  Physician 
Bound  by  the  Social  and  Moral  Ideas  of  His  Age — The  Physician  as 
Reformer — Sexual  Abstinence  and  Sexual  Hygiene — Alcohol — The  Infhi- 
ence  of  Physical  and  Mental  Exercise — The  Inadequacy  of  Sexual 
Hygiene  in  This  Field — The  Unreal  Nature  of  the  Conception  of  Sexual 
Abstinence — The  Necessity  of  Replacing  It  by  a  More  Positive  Ideal. 

When  we  look  at  the  matter  from  a  purely  abstract  or  even 
purely  biological  point  of  view,  it  might  seem  that  in  deciding 
that  asceticism  and  chastity  are  of  high  value  for  the  personal 
life  we  have  said  all  that  is  necessary  to  say.  That,  however,  is 
very  far  from  being  the  case.  We  soon  realize  here,  as  at  every 
point  in  the  practical  application  of  sexual  psychology,  that  it  is 
not  sufficient  to  determine  the  abstractly  right  course  along  bio- 
logical lines.  We  have  to  harmonize  our  biological  demands  with 
social  demands.  We  are  ruled  not  only  by  natural  instincts  but 
by  inherited  traditions,  that  in  the  far  past  were  solidly  based  on 
intelligible  grounds,  and  that  even  still,  by  the  mere  fact  of  their 
existence,  exert  a  force  which  we  cannot  and  ought  not  to  ignore. 

In  discussing  the  valuation  of  the  sexual  impulse  we  found 

that  we  had  good  ground  for  making  a  very  high  estimate  of 

love.     In  discussing  chastity  and  asceticism  we  found  that  they 

also  are  highly  to  be  valued.     And  we  found  that,  so  far  from  any 

(178) 


THE   PROBLEM    OF    SEXUAL   ABSTINENCE.  179 

contradiction  being  here  involved,  love  and  chastity  are  inter- 
twined in  all  their  finest  developments,  and  that  there  is  thus  a 
perfect  harmony  in  apparent  opposition.  But  when  we  come  to 
consider  the  matter  in  detail,  in  its  particular  personal  applica- 
tions, we  find  that  a  new  factor  asserts  itself.  We  find  that  our 
inherited  social  and  religious  traditions  exert  a  pressure,  all  on 
one  side,  which  makes  it  impossible  to  place  the  relations  of  love 
and  chastity  simply  on  the  basis  of  biology  and  reason.  We  are 
confronted  at  the  outset  by  our  traditions.  On  the  one  side  these 
traditions  have  weighted  the  word  'lust" — considered  as  express- 
ing all  the  manifestations  of  the  sexual  impulse  which  are  outside 
marriage  or  which  fail  to  have  marriage  as  their  direct  and 
ostentatious  end — with  deprecatory  and  sinister  meanings.  And 
on  the  other  side  these  traditions  have  created  the  problem  of 
"sexual  abstinence,"  which  has  nothing  to  do  with  either  asceti- 
cism or  chastity  as  these  have  been  defined  in  the  previous 
chapter,  but  merely  with  the  purely  negative  pressure  on  the 
sexual  impulse,  exerted,  independently  of  the  individual's  wishes, 
by  his  religious  and  social  environment. 

The  theological  conception  of  "lust,"  or  "libido,"  as  sin,  fol- 
lowed logically  the  early  Christian  conception  of  "the  flesh,"  and 
became  inevitable  as  soon  as  that  conception  was  firmly  estab- 
lished. Not  only,  indeed,  had  early  Christian  ideals  a  degrading 
influence  on  the  estimation  of  sexual  desire  per  se,  but  they 
tended  to  depreciate  generally  the  dignity  of  the  sexual  relation- 
ship. If  a  man  made  sexual  advances  to  a  woman  outside 
marriage,  and  thus  brought  her  within  the  despised  circle  of 
"lust,"  he  was  injuring  her  because  he  was  impairing  her  religious 
and  moral  value.1  The  only  way  he  could  repair  the  damage 
done  was  by  paying  her  money  or  by  entering  into  a  forced  and 
therefore  probably  unfortunate  marriage  with  her.  That  is  to 
say  that  sexual  relationships  were,  by  the  ecclesiastical  traditions, 


1  This  view  was  an  ambiguous  improvement  on  the  view,  universally 
prevalent,  as  Westermarck  has  shown,  among  primitive  peoples,  that  the 
sexual  act  involves  indignity  to  a  woman  or  depreciation  of  her  only  in 
so  far  as  she  is  the  property  of  another  person  who  is  the  really  injured 
party. 


180  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   SEX. 

placed  on  a  pecuniary  basis,  on  the  same  level  as  prostitution. 
By  its  well-meant  intentions  to  support  the  theological  morality 
which  had  developed  on  an  ascetic  basis,  the  Church  was  thus 
really  undermining  even  that  form  of  sexual  relationship  which 
it  sanctified. 

Gregory  the  Great  ordered  that  the  seducer  of  a  virgin  shall  marry 
her,  or,  in  case  of  refusal,  be  severely  punished  corporally  and  shut  up 
in  a  monastery  to  perform  penance.  According  to  other  ecclesiastical 
rules,  the  seducer  of  a  virgin,  though  held  to  no  responsibility  by  the 
civil  forum,  was  required  to  marry  her,  or  to  find  a  husband  and  furnish 
a  dowry  for  her.  Such  rules  had  their  good  side,  and  were  especially 
equitable  when  seduction  had  been  accomplished  by  deceit.  But  they 
largely  tended  in  practice  to  subordinate  all  questions  of  sexual  morality 
to  a  money  question.  The  reparation  to  the  woman,  also,  largely  became 
necessary  because  the  ecclesiastical  conception  of  lust  caused  her  value 
to  be  depreciated  by  contact  with  lust,  and  the  reparation  might  be  said 
to  constitute  a  part  of  penance.  Aquinas  held  that  lust,  in  however 
slight  a  degree,  is  a  mortal  sin,  and  most  of  the  more  influential 
theologians  took  a  view  nearly  or  quite  as  rigid.  Some,  however,  held 
that  a  certain  degree  of  delectation  is  possible  in  these  matters  without 
mortal  sin,  or  asserted,  for  instance,  that  to  feel  the  touch  of  a  soft 
and  warm  hand  is  not  mortal  sin  so  long  as  no  sexual  feeling  is  thereby 
aroused.  Others,  however,  held  that  such  distinctions  are  impossible, 
and  that  all  pleasures  of  this  kind  are  sinful.  Tomas  Sanchez  en- 
deavored at  much  length  to  establish  rules  for  the  complicated  problems 
of  delectation  that  thus  arose,  but  he  was  constrained  to  admit  that  no 
rules  are  really  possible,  and  that  such  matters  must  be  left  to  the  judg- 
ment of  a  prudent  man.  At  that  point  casuistry  dissolves  and  the 
modern  point  of  view  emerges  (see,  e.g.,  Lea,  History  of  Auricular  Con- 
fession, vol.  ii,  pp.  57,  115,  246,  etc.). 

Even  to-day  the  influence  of  the  old  traditions  of  the  Church 
still  unconsciously  survives  among  us.  That  is  inevitable  as 
regards  religious  teachers,  but  it  is  found  also  in  men  of  science, 
even  in  Protestant  countries.  The  result  is  that  quite  contra- 
dictory dogmas  are  found  side  by  side,  even  in  the  same  writer. 
On  the  one  hand,  the  manifestations  of  the  sexual  impulse  are 
emphatically  condemned  as  both  unnecessary  and  evil;  on  the 
other  hand,  marriage,  which  is  fundamentally  (whatever  else  it 
may  also  be)  a  manifestation  of  the  sexual  impulse,  receives 
equally  emphatic  approval  as  the  only  proper  and  moral  form  of 


THE    PROBLEM    OF   SEXUAL   ABSTINENCE.  181 

living.1  There  can  be  no  reasonable  doubt  whatever  that  it  is  to 
the  surviving  and  pervading  influence  of  the  ancient  traditional 
theological  conception  of  libido  that  we  must  largely  attribute 
the  sharp  difference  of  opinions  among  physicians  on  the  question 
of  sexual  abstinence  and  the  otherwise  unnecessary  acrimony  with 
which  these  opinions  have  sometimes  been  stated. 

On  the  one  side,  we  find  the  emphatic  statement  that  sexual 
intercourse  is  necessary  and  that  health  cannot  be  maintained 
unless  the  sexual  activities  are  regularly  exercised. 

"All  parts  of  the  body  which  are  developed  for  a  definite  use 
are  kept  in  health,  and  in  the  enjo}-ment  of  fair  growth  and  of 
long  youth,  by  the  fulfilment  of  that  use,  and  by  their  appropriate 
exercise  in  the  employment  to  which  they  are  accustomed."  In 
that  statement,  which  occurs  in  the  great  Hippocratic  treatise 
"On  the  Joints,"  we  have  the  classic  expression  of  the  doctrine 
which  in  ever  varying  forms  has  been  taught  by  all  those  who 
have  protested  against  sexual  abstinence.  When  we  come  down 
to  the  sixteenth  century  outbreak  of  Protestantism  we  find  that 
Luther's  revolt  against  Catholicism  was  in  part  a  protest  against 
the  teaching  of  sexual  abstinence.  "He  to  whom  the  gift  of  con- 
tinence is  not  given,"  he  said  in  his  Table  Talk,  "will  not  become 
chaste  by  fasting  and  vigils.  For  my  own  part  I  was  not 
excessively  tormented  [though  elsewhere  he  speaks  of  the  great 
fires  of  lust  by  which  he  had  been  troubled],  but  all  the  same  the 
more  I  macerated  myself  the  more  I  burnt."  And  three  hundred 
years  later,  Bebel,  the  would-be  nineteenth  century  Luther  of  a 
different  Protestantism,  took  the  same  attitude  towards  sexual 
abstinence,  while  Hinton  the  physician  and  philosopher,  living  in 
a  land  of  rigid  sexual  conventionalism  and  prudery,  and  moved 
by  keen  sympathy  for  the  sufferings  he  saw  around  him,  would 
break  into  passionate  sarcasm  when  confronted  by  the  doctrine  of 
sexual  abstinence.  "There  are  innumerable  ills — terrible  destruc- 
tions, madness  even,  the  ruin  of  lives — for  which  the  embrace 
of  man  and  woman  would  be  a  remedy.     No  one  thinks  of 


1  This  implicit  contradiction  has  been  acutely  pointed  out  from  the 
religious  side  by  the  Rev.  H.  Northcote,  Christianity  and  Sex  Problems, 
p.  53. 


182  PSYCHOLOGY   OP   SEX. 

questioning  it.  Terrible  evils  and  a  remedy  in  a  delight  and  joy ! 
And  man  has  chosen  so  to  muddle  his  life  that  he  must  say: 
"There,  that  would  be  a  remedy,  but  I  cannot  use  it.  I  must 
be  virtuous!" 

If  we  confine  ourselves  to  modern  times  and  to  fairly  precise  med- 
ical statements,  we  find  in  Schurig's  Spermatologia  (1720,  pp.  274  et 
seq. ) ,  not  only  a  discussion  of  the  advantages  of  moderate  sexual  inter- 
course in  a  number  of  disorders,  as  witnessed  by  famous  authorities, 
but  also  a  list  of  results — including  anorexia,  insanity,  impotence, 
epilepsy,  even  death — which  were  believed  to  have  been  due  to  sexual 
abstinence.  This  extreme  view  of  the  possible  evils  of  sexual  abstinence 
seems  to  have  been  part  of  the  Renaissance  traditions  of  medicine  stiff- 
ened by  a  certain  opposition  between  religion  and  science.  It  was  still 
rigorously  stated  by  Lallemand  early  in  the  nineteenth  century.  Subse- 
quently, the  medical  statements  of  the  evil  results  of  sexual  abstinence 
became  more  temperate  and  measured,  though  still  often  pronounced. 
Thus  Gyurkovechky  believes  that  these  results  may  be  as  serious  as  those 
of  sexual  excess.  Krafft-Ebing  showed  that  sexual  abstinence  could  pro- 
duce a  state  of  general  nervous  excitement  (Jahrbuch  fiir  Psychiatric, 
Bd.  viii,  Heft  1  and  2).  Schrenck-Notzing  regards  sexual  abstinence  as 
a  cause  of  extreme  sexual  hypersesthesia  and  of  various  perversions  (in 
a  chapter  on  sexual  abstinence  in  his  Kriminalpsychologische  und 
Psychopathologische  Studien,  1902,  pp.  174-178).  He  records  in  illus- 
tration the  case  of  a  man  of  thirty-six  who  had  masturbated  in  modera- 
tion as  a  boy,  but  abandoned  the  practice  entirely,  on  moral  grounds, 
twenty  years  ago,  and  has  never  had  sexual  intercourse,  feeling  proud 
to  enter  marriage  a  chaste  man,  but  now  for  years  has  suffered  greatly 
from  extreme  sexual  hypersesthesia  and  concentration  of  thought  on 
sexual  subjects,  notwithstanding  a  strong  will  and  the  resolve  not  to 
masturbate  or  indulge  in  illicit  intercourse.  In  another  case  a  vigorous 
and  healthy  man,  not  inverted,  and  with  strong  sexual  desires,  who 
remained  abstinent  up  to  marriage,  suffers  from  psychic  impotence,  and 
his  wife  remains  a  virgin  notwithstanding  all  her  affection  and  caresses. 
Ord  considered  that  sexual  abstinence  might  produce  many  minor  evils. 
"Most  of  us,"  he  wrote  {British  Medical  Journal,  Aug.  2,  1884)  "have, 
no  doubt,  been  consulted  by  men,  chaste  in  act,  who  are  tormented  by 
sexual  excitement.  They  tell  one  stories  of  long-continued  local  excite- 
ment, followed  by  intense  muscular  weariness,  or  by  severe  aching  pain 
in  the  back  and  legs.  In  some  I  have  had  complaints  of  swelling  and 
stiffness  in  the  legs,  and  of  pains  in  the  joints,  particularly  in  the 
knees;"  he  gives  the  case  of  a  man  who  suffered  after  prolonged  chastity 
from  inflammatory  conditions  of  knees  and  was  only  cured  by  marriage. 


THE   PROBLEM   OF   SEXUAL  ABSTINENCE.  18o 

Pearce  Gould,  it  may  be  added,  finds  that  "excessive  ungratified  sexual 
desire"  is  one  of  the  causes  of  acute  orchitis.  Remondino  ("Some 
Observations  on  Continence  as  a  Factor  in  Health  and  Disease,"  Pacific 
Medical  Journal,  Jan.,  1900)  records  the  case  of  a  gentleman  of  nearly 
seventy  who,  during  the  prolonged  illness  of  his  wife,  suffered  from  fre- 
quent and  extreme  priapism,  causing  insomnia.  He  was  very  certain 
that  his  troubles  were  not  due  to  his  continence,  but  all  treatment  failed 
and  there  were  no  spontaneous  emissions.  At  last  Remondino  advised 
him  to,  as  he  expresses  it,  "imitate  Solomon."  He  did  so,  and  all  the 
symptoms  at  once  disappeared.  This  case  is  of  special  interest,  because 
the  symptoms  were  not  accompanied  by  any  conscious  sexual  desire.  It 
is  no  longer  generally  believed  that  sexual  abstinence  tends  to  produce 
insanity,  and  the  occasional  cases  in  which  prolonged  and  intense  sexual 
desire  in  young  women  is  followed  by  insanity  will  usually  be  found  to 
occur  on  a  basis  of  hereditary  degeneration.  It  is  held  by  many 
authorities,  however,  that  minor  mental  troubles,  of  a  more  or  less  vague 
character,  as  well  as  neurasthenia  and  hysteria,  are  by  no  means  infre- 
quently due  to  sexual  abstinence.  Thus  Freud,  who  has  carefully  studied 
angstneurosis,  the  obsession  of  anxiety,  finds  that  it  is  a  result  of  sexual 
abstinence,  and  may  indeed  be  considered  as  a  vicarious  form  of  such 
abstinence  (Freud,  Sammlung  Kleiner  BcTiriften  sur  Neurosenlehre, 
1906,  pp.  76  et  seq.).      ' 

The  whole  subject  of  sexual  abstinence  has  been  discussed  at 
length  by  Nystrom,  of  Stockholm,  in  Das  Geschlechtsleben  und  seine 
Gesetse,  Ch.  III.  He  concludes  that  it  is  desirable  that  continence 
should  be  preserved  as  long  as  possible  in  order  to  strengthen  the  phys- 
ical health  and  to  develop  the  intelligence  and  character.  The  doctrine 
of  permanent  sexual  abstinence,  however,  he  regards  as  entirely  false, 
except  in  the  case  of  a  small  number  of  religious  or  philosophic  persons. 
"Complete  abstinence  during  a  long  period  of  years  cannot  be  bonis 
without  producing  serious  results  both  on  the  body  and  the  mind. 
.  .  .  .  Certainly,  a  young  man  should  repress  his  sexual  impulses 
as  long  as  possible  and  avoid  everything  that  may  artificially  act  as  a 
sexual  stimulant.  If,  however,  he  has  done  so,  and  still  suffers  from 
unsatisfied  normal  sexual  desires,  and  if  he  sees  no  possibility  of  mar- 
riage within  a  reasonable  time,  no  one  should  dare  to  say  that  he  is 
committing  a  sin  if,  with  mutual  understanding,  he  enters  into  sexual 
relations  with  a  woman  friend,  or  forms  temporary  sexual  relationships, 
provided,  that  is,  that  he  takes  the  honorable  precaution  of  begetting  no 
children,  unless  his  partner  is  entirely  willing  to  become  a  mother,  and 
he  is  prepared  to  accept  all  the  responsibilities  of  fatherhood."  In  an 
article  of  later  date  ("Die  Einwirkung  der  Sexuellen  Abstinenz  auf  die 
Gesundheit,"  Sexual-ProMeme,  July,  1908)  Nystrom  vigorously  sums  up 
his  views.     He  includes  among  the  results  of  sexual  abstinence  orchitis, 


184  PSYCHOLOGY    OF   SEX. 

frequent  involuntary  seminal  emissions,  impotence,  neurasthenia,  depres- 
sion, and  a  great  variety  of  nervous  disturbances  of  vaguer  character, 
involving  diminished  power  of  work,  limited  enjoyment  of  life,  sleepless- 
ness, nervousness,  and  preoccupation  with  sexual  desires  and  imagina- 
tions. More  especially  there  is  heightened  sexual  irritability  with  erec- 
tions, or  even  seminal  emissions  on  the  slightest  occasion,  as  on  gazing 
at  an  attractive  woman  or  in  social  intercourse  with  her,  or  in  the  pres- 
ence of  works  of  art  representing  naked  figures.  Nystrom  has  had  the 
opportunity  of  investigating  and  recording  ninety  cases  of  persons  who 
have  presented  these  and  similar  symptoms  as  the  result,  he  believes,  of 
sexual  abstinence.  He  has  published  some  of  these  cases  (Zeitschrift 
fur  Sexualwissenschaft,  Oct.,  1908),  but  it  may  be  added  that  Rohleder 
("Die  Abstinentia  Sexualis,"  ib.,  Nov.,  1908)  has  criticized  these  cases, 
and  doubts  whether  any  of  them  are  conclusive.  Rohleder  believes  that 
the  bad  results  of  sexual  abstinence  are  never  permanent,  and  also  that 
no  anatomically  pathological  states  (such  as  orchitis)  can  be  thereby 
produced.  But  he  considers,  nevertheless,  that  even  incomplete  and 
temporary  sexual  abstinence  may  produce  fairly  serious  results,  and 
especially  neurasthenic  disturbances  of  various  kinds,  such  as  nervous 
irritability,  anxiety,  depression,  disinclination  for  work;  also  diurnal 
emissions,  premature  ejaculations,  and  even  a  state  approaching  saty- 
riasis; and  in  women  hysteria,  hystero-epilepsy,  and  nymphomaniacal 
manifestations;  all  these  symptoms  may,  however,  he  believes,  be  cured 
when  the  abstinence  ceases. 

Many  advocates  of  sexual  abstinence  have  attached  importance  to 
the  fact  that  men  of  great  genius  have  apparently  been  completely  con- 
tinent throughout  life.  This  is  certainly  true  (see  ante,  p.  173).  But 
this  fact  can  scarcely  be  invoked  as  an  argument  in  favor  of  the  advan- 
tages of  sexual  abstinence  among  the  ordinary  population.  J.  F.  Scott 
selects  Jesus,  Newton,  Beethoven,  and  Kant  as  "men  of  vigor  and  mental 
acumen  who  have  lived  chastely  as  bachelors."  It  cannot,  however,  be 
said  that  Dr.  Scott  has  been  happy  in  the  four  figures  whom  he  has  been 
able  to  select  from  the  whole  history  of  human  genius  as  examples  of 
life-long  sexual  abstinence.  We  know  little  with  absolute  certainty  of 
Jesus,  and  even  if  we  reject  the  diagnosis  which  Professor  Binet-Sangle 
(in  his  Folie  de  Jesus)  has  built  up  from  a  minute  study  of  the  Gospels, 
there  are  many  reasons  why  we  should  refrain  from  emphasizing  the 
example  of  his  sexual  abstinence;  Newton,  apart  from  his  stupendous 
genius  in  a  special  field,  was  an  incomplete  and  unsatisfactory  human 
being  who  ultimately  reached  a  condition  very  like  insanity;  Beethoven 
was  a  thoroughly  morbid  and  diseased  man,  who  led  an  intensely  un- 
happy existence;  Kant,  from  first  to  last,  was  a  feeble  valetudinarian. 
It  would  probably  be  difficult  to  find  a  healthy  normal  man  who  would 
voluntarily  accept  the  life  led  by  any  of  these  four,  even  as  the  price 


THE    PROBLEM    OE    SEXUAL   ABSTINENCE.  185 

of  their  fame.  J.  A.  Godfrey  (Science  of  Sex,  pp.  139-147)  discusses 
at  length  the  question  whether  sexual  abstinence  is  favorable  to  ordinary 
intellectual  vigor,  deciding  that  it  is  not,  and  that  we  cannot  argue 
from  the  occasional  sexual  abstinence  of  men  of  genius,  who  are  often 
abnormally  constituted,  and  physically  below  the  average,  to  the  nor- 
mally developed  man.  Sexual  abstinence,  it  may  be  added,  is  by  no 
means  always  a  favorable  sign,  even  in  men  who  stand  intellectually 
above  the  average.  "I  have  not  obtained  the  impression,"  remarks 
Freud  (Sexual-Probleme,  March,  1908),  "that  sexual  abstinence  is  help- 
ful to  energetic  and  independent  men  of  action  or  original  thinkers,  to 
courageous  liberators  or  reformers.  The  sexual  conduct  of  a  man  is 
often  symbolic  of  his  whole  method  of  reaction  in  the  world.  The  man 
who  energetically  grasps  the  object  of  his  sexual  desire  may  be  trusted 
to  show  a  similarly  relentless  energy  in  the  pursuit  of  other  aims." 

Many,  though  not  all,  who  deny  that  prolonged  sexual 
abstinence  is  harmless,  include  women  in  this  statement.  There 
are  some  authorities  indeed  who  believe  that,  whether  or  not  any 
conscious  sexual  desire  is  present,  sexual  abstinence  is  less  easily 
tolerated  by  women  than  by  men.1 

Cabanis,  in  his  famous  and  pioneering  work,  Rapports  du  Physique 
et  du  Moral,  said  in  1802,  that  women  not  only  bear  sexual  excess  more 
easily  than  men,  but  sexual  privations  with  more  difficulty,  and  a  cau- 
tious and  experienced  observer  of  to-day,  Lowenfeld  (Sexualleben  und 
Nervenleiden,  1899,  p.  53),  while  not  considering  that  normal  women  bear 
sexual  abstinence  less  easily  than  men,  adds  that  this  is  not  the  case 
with  women  of  neuropathic  disposition,  who  suffer  much  more  from  this 
cause,  and  either  masturbate  when  sexual  intercourse  is  impossible  or 
fall  into  hystero-neurasthenic  states.  Busch  stated  (Das  Geschlechts- 
leben  des  Weibes,  1839,  vol.  i,  pp.  69,  71)  that  not  only  is  the  working 
of  the  sexual  functions  in  the  organism  stronger  in  women  than  in  men, 
but  that  the  bad  results  of  sexual  abstinence  are  more  marked  in  women. 
Sir  Benjamin  Brodie  said  long  ago  that  the  evils  of  continence  to  women 
are  perhaps  greater  than  those  of  incontinence,  and  to-day  Hammer  (Die 
Gesundheitlichen  Gefahren  der  GescMecMliclien  EntJwltsamkeit,  1904) 
states  that,  so  far  as  reasons  of  health  are  concerned,  sexual  abstinence 
is  no  more  to  be  recommended  to  women  than  to  men.  Nystrom  is  of 
the  same  opinion,  though  he  thinks  that  women  bear  sexual  abstinence 
better  than  men,  and  has  discussed  this  special  question  at  length  in  a 
section  of  his  Geschlechtsleben  und  seine  Gesetze.     He  agrees  with  the 


i  It  has  already  been  necessary  to  discuss  this  point  briefly  in  "The 
Sexual  Impulse  in  Women,"  vol.  iii'of  these  Studies. 


186  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   SEX. 

experienced  Erb  that  a  large  number  of  completely  chaste  women  of  high 
character,  and  possessing  distinguished  qualities  of  mind  and  heart,  are 
more  or  less  disordered  through  their  sexual  abstinence ;  this  is  specially 
often  the  case  with  women  married  to  impotent  men,  though  it  is  fre- 
quently not  until  they  approach  the  age  of  thirty,  Nystrom  remarks,  that 
women  definitely  realize  their  sexual  needs. 

A  great  many  women  who  are  healthy,  chaste,  and  modest,  feel  at 
times  such  powerful  sexual  desire  that  they  can  scarcely  resist  the 
temptation  to  go  into  the  street  and  solicit  the  first  man  they  meet. 
Not  a  few  such  women,  often  of  good  breeding,  do  actually  offer  them- 
selves to  men  with  whom  they  may  have  perhaps  only  the  slightest 
acquaintance.  Routh  records  such  cases  (British  Gynaecological  Jour- 
nal, Feb.,  1887),  and  most  men  have  met  with  them  at  some  time.  When 
a  woman  of  high  moral  character  and  strong  passions  is  subjected  for 
a  very  long  period  to  the  perpetual  strain  of  such  sexual  craving,  espe- 
cially if  combined  with  love  for  a  definite  individual,  a  chain  of  evil 
results,  physical  and  moral,  may  be  set  up,  and  numerous  distinguished 
physicians  have  recorded  such  cases,  which  terminated  at  once  in  com- 
plete recovery  as  soon  as  the  passion  was  _gratified.  Lauvergne  long 
since  described  a  case.  A  fairly  typical  ease  of  this  kind  was  reported 
in  detail  by  Brachet  (De  VHypochondrie,  p.  69)  and  embodied  by  Grie- 
singer  in  his  classic  work  on  "Mental  Pathology."  It  concerned  a 
healthy  married  lady,  twenty-six  years  old,  having  three  children.  A 
7isiting  acquaintance  completely  gained  her  affections,  but  she  strenu- 
ously resisted  the  seducing  influence,  and  concealed  the  violent  passion 
that  he  had  aroused  in  her.  Various  serious  symptoms,  physical  and 
mental,  slowly  began  to  appear,  and  she  developed  what  seemed  to  be 
signs  of  consumption.  Six  months'  stay  in  the  south  of  France  pro- 
duced no  improvement,  either  in  the  bodily  or  mental  symptoms.  On 
returning  home  she  became  still  worse.  Then  she  again  met  the  object 
of  her  passion,  succumbed,  abandoned  her  husband  and  children,  and 
fled  with  him.  Six  months  later  she  was  scarcely  recognizable;  beauty, 
freshness  and  plumpness  had  taken  the  place  of  emaciation;  while  the 
symptoms  of  consumption  and  all  other  troubles  had  entirely  disap- 
peared. A  somewhat  similar  case  is  recorded  by  Camill  Lederer,  of 
Vienna  (Monatssclirift  fiir  Harnkranklieiten  und  Sexuelle  Hygiene, 
1906,  Heft  3).  A  widow,  a  few  months  after  her  husband's  death,  began 
to  cough,  with  symptoms  of  bronchial  catarrh,  but  no  definite  signs  of 
lung  disease.  Treatment  and  change  of  climate  proved  entirely  unavail- 
ing to  effect  a  cure.  Two  years  later,  as  no  signs  of  disease  had 
appeared  in  the  lungs,  though  the  symptoms  continued,  she  married 
again.  Within  a  very  few  weeks  all  symptoms  had  disappeared,  and 
she  was  entirely  fresh  and  well. 

Numerous   distinguished  gynecologists  have   recorded  their  belief 


THE    PROBLEM    OE    SEXUAL   ABSTINENCE.  187 

that  sexual  excitement  is  a  remedy  for  various  disorders  of  the  sexual 
system  in  women,  and  that  abstinence  is  a  cause  of  such  disorders. 
Matthews  Duncan  said  that  sexual  excitement  is  the  only  remedy  for 
amenorrhcea;  "the  only  emmenagogue  medicine  that  I  know  of,"  he 
wrote  {Medical  Times,  Feb.  2,  1884),  "is  not  to  be  found  in  the  Phar- 
macopoeia: it  is  erotic  excitement.  Of  the  value  of  erotic  excitement 
there  is  no  doubt."  Anstie,  in  his  work  on  Neuralgia,  refers  to  the 
beneficial  effect  of  sexual  intercourse  on  dysmenorrhcea,  remarking  that 
the  necessity  of  the  full  natural  exercise  of  the  sexual  function  is  shown 
by  the  great  improvement  in  such  cases  after  marriage,  and  especially 
after  childbirth.  (It  may  be  remarked  that  not  all  authorities  find 
dysmenorrhcea  benefited  by  marriage,  and  some  consider  that  the  disease 
is  often  thereby  aggravated;  see,  e.g.,  Wythe  Cook,  American  Journal 
Obstetrics,  Dec,  1893.)  The  distinguished  gynaecologist,  Tilt,  at  a  some- 
what earlier  date  (On  Uterine  and  Ovarian  Inflammation,  1862,  p.  309), 
insisted  on  the  evil  results  of  sexual  abstinence  in  producing  ovarian 
irritation,  and  perhaps  subacute  ovaritis,  remarking  that  this  was  spe- 
cially pronounced  in  young  widows,  and  in  prostitutes  placed  in  peniten- 
tiaries. Intense  desire,  he  pointed  out,  determines  organic  movements 
resembling  those  required  for  the  gratification  of  the  desire.  These 
burning  desires,  which  can  only  be  quenched  by  their  legitimate  satis- 
faction, are  still  further  heightened  by  the  erotic  influence  of  thoughts, 
books,  pictures,  music,  which  are  often  even  more  sexually  stimulat- 
ing than  social  intercourse  with  men,  but  the  excitement  thus  produced 
is  not  relieved  by  that  natural  collapse  which  should  follow  a  state  of 
vital  turgescence.  After  referring  to  the  biological  facts  which  show 
the  effect  of  psychic  influences  on  the  formative  powers  of  the  ovario- 
uterine  organs  in  animals,  Tilt  continues:  "I  may  fairly  infer  that 
similar  incitements  on  the  mind  of  females  may  have  a  stimulating  effect 
on  the  organs  of  ovulation.  I  have  frequently  known  menstruation  to 
be  irregular,  profuse,  or  abnormal  in  type  during  courtship  in  women  in 
whom  nothing  similar  had  previously  occurred,  and  that  this  protracted 
the  treatment  of  chronic  ovaritis  and  of  uterine  inflammation."  Bonni- 
field,  of  Cincinnati  [Medical  Standard,  Dec,  1896),  considers  that  unsat- 
isfied sexual  desire  is  an  important  cause  of  catarrhal  endometritis.  It 
is  well  known  that  uterine  fibroids  bear  a  definite  relation  to  organic 
sexual  activity,  and  that  sexual  abstinence,  more  especially  the  long- 
continued  deprivation  of  pregnancy,  is  a  very  important  cause  of  the 
disease.  This  is  well  shown  by  an  analysis  by  A.  E.  Giles  (Lancet, 
March  2,  1907)  of  one  hundred  and  fifty  cases.  As  many  as  fifty-six  of 
these  cases,  more  than  a  third,  were  unmarried  women,  though  nearly 
all  were  over  thirty  years  of  age.  Of  the  ninety-four  married  women, 
thirty- four  had  never  been  pregnant;  of  those  who  had  been  pregnant, 
thirty-six  had  not  been  so  for  at  least  ten  years.     Thus  eighty-four  per 


105  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

cent,  had  either  not  been  pregnant  at  all,  or  had  had  no  pregnancy  for 
at  least  ten  years.  It  is,  therefore,  evident  that  deprivation  of  sexual 
function,  whether  or  not  involving  abstinence  from  sexual  intercourse,  is 
an  important  cause  of  uterine  fibroid  tumors.  Balls-Headley,  of  Vic- 
toria (Evolution  of  the  Diseases  of  Women,  1894,  and  "Etiology  of  Dis- 
eases of  Female  Genital  Organs,"  Allbutt  and  Playfair,  System  of 
Gynecology ) ,  believes  that  unsatisfied  sexual  desire  is  a  factor  in  very 
many  disorders  of  the  sexual  organs  in  women.  "My  views,"  he  writes 
in  a  private  letter,  "are  founded  on  a  really  special  gynaecological  prac- 
tice of  twenty  years,  during  which  I  have  myself  taken  about  seven 
thousand  most  careful  records.  The  normal  woman  is  sexually  well- 
formed  and  her  sexual  feelings  require  satisfaction  in  the  direction  of 
the  production  of  the  next  generation,  but  under  the  restrictive  and  now 
especially  abnormal  conditions  of  civilization  some  women  undergo 
hereditary  atrophy,  and  the  uterus  and  sexual  feelings  are  feeble;  in 
others  of  good  average  local  development  the  feeling  is  in  restraint;  in 
others  the  feelings,  as  well  as  the  organs,  are  strong,  and  if  normal  use 
be  withheld  evils  ensue.  Bearing  in  mind  these  varieties  of  congenital 
development  in  relation  to  the  respective  condition  of  virginity,  or  sterile 
or  parous  married  life,  the  mode  of  occurrence  and  of  progress  of  disease 
grows  on  the  physician's  mind,  and  there  is  no  more  occasion  for  bewil- 
derment than  to  the  methematician  studying  conic  sections,  when  his 
knowledge  has  grown  from  the  basis  of  the  science.  The  problem  is 
suggested:  Has  a  crowd  of  unassociated  diseases  fallen  as  through  a 
sieve  on  woman,  or  have  these  affections  almost  necessarily  ensued  from 
the  circumstances  of  her  unnatural  environment?"  It  may  be  added 
that  Kisch  ( Sexual  Life  of  Woman ) ,  while  protesting  against  any  exag- 
gerated estimate  of  the  effects  of  sexual  abstinence,  considers  that  in 
women  it  may  result,  not  only  in  numerous  local  disorders,  but  also  in 
nervous  disturbance,  hysteria,  and  even  insanity,  while  in  neurasthenic 
women  "regulated  sexual  intercourse  has  an  actively  beneficial  effect 
which  is  often  striking." 

It  is  important  to  remark  that  the  evil  results  of  sexual  abstinence 
in  women,  in  the  opinion  of  many  of  those  who  insist  upon  their  impor- 
tance, are  by  no  means  merely  due  to  unsatisfied  sexual  desire.  They 
may  be  pronounced  even  when  the  woman  herself  has  not  the  slightest 
consciousness  of  sexual  needs.  This  was  clearly  pointed  out  forty  years 
ago  by  the  sagacious  Anstie  (op.  cit).  In  women,  especially,  he  re- 
marks, "a  certain  restless  hyperactivity  of  mind,  and  perhaps  of  body 
also,  seems  to  be  the  expression  of  Nature's  unconscious  resentment  of 
the  neglect  of  sexual  functions."  Such  women,  he  adds,  have  kept  them- 
selves free  from  masturbation  "at  the  expense  of  a  perpetual  and  almost 
fierce  activity  of  mind  and  muscle."  Anstie  had  found  that  some  of  the 
worst  cases  of  the  form  of  nervosity  and  neurasthenia  which  he  termed 


THE   PROBLEM   OP   SEXUAL  ABSTINENCE.  189 

"spinal  irritation,"  often  accompanied  by  irritable  stomacb  and  anaemia, 
get  well  on  marriage.  "Tbere  can  be  no  question,"  he  continues,  "that 
a  very  large  proportion  of  these  cases  in  single  women  (who  form  by 
far  the  greater  number  of  subjects  of  spinal  irritation)  are  due  to  this 
conscious  or  unconscious  irritation  kept  up  by  an  unsatisfied  sexual 
want.  It  is  certain  that  very  many  young  persons  (women  more 
especially)  are  tormented  by  the  irritability  of  the  sexual  organs  with- 
out having  the  least  consciousness  of  sexual  desire,  and  present  the  sad 
spectacle  of  a  vie  manquee  without  ever  knowing  the  true  source  of  the 
misery  which  incapacitates  them  for  all  the  active  duties  of  life.  It  is 
a  singular  fact  that  in  occasional  instances  one  may  even  see  two  sis- 
ters, inheriting  the  same  kind  of  nervous  organization,  both  tormented 
with  the  symptoms  of  spinal  irritation  and  both  probably  suffering  from 
repressed  sexual  functions,  but  of  whom  one  shall  be  pure-minded  and 
entirely  unconscious  of  the  real  source  of  her  troubles,  while  the  other 
is  a  victim  to  conscious  and  fruitless  sexual  irritation."  In  this  matter 
Anstie  may  be  regarded  as  a  forerunner  of  Freud,  who  has  developed 
with  great  subtlety  and  analytic  power  the  doctrine  of  the  transforma- 
tion of  repressed  sexual  instinct  in  women  into  morbid  forms.  He  con- 
siders that  the  nervosity  of  to-day  is  largely  due  to  the  injurious  action 
on  the  sexual  life  of  that  repression  of  natural  instincts  on  which  our 
civilization  is  built  up.  (Perhaps  the  clearest  brief  statement  of 
Freud's  views  on  the  matter  is  to  be  found  in  a  very  suggestive  article, 
"Die  'Kulturelle'  Sexualmoral  und  die  Moderne  Nervositat,"  in  Sewual- 
Probleme,  March,  1908,  reprinted  in  the  second  series  of  Freud's 
Sammliing  Kleiner  Scliriften  isur  Neurosenlehre,  1909 ) .  We  possess  the 
aptitude,  he  says,  of  sublimating  and  transforming  our  sexual  activities 
into  other  activities  of  a  psychically  related  character,  but  non-sexual. 
This  process  cannot,  however,  be  carried  out  to  an  unlimited  extent  any 
more  than  can  the  conversion  of  heat  into  mechanical  work  in  our 
machines.  A  certain  amount  of  direct  sexual  satisfaction  is  for  most 
organizations  indispensable,  and  the  renunciation  of  this  individually 
varying  amount  is  punished  by  manifestations  which  we  are  compelled 
to  regard  as  morbid.  The  process  of  sublimation,  under  the  influence 
of  civilization,  leads  both  to  sexual  perversions  and  to  psycho-neuroses. 
These  two  conditions  are  closely  related,  as  Freud  views  the  process  of 
their  development;  they  stand  to  each  other  as  positive  and  negative, 
sexual  perversions  being  the  positive  pole  and  psycho-neuroses  the  nega- 
tive. It  often  happens,  he  remarks,  that  a  brother  may  be  sexually 
perverse,  while  his  sister,  with  a  weaker  sexual  temperament,  is  a 
neurotic  whose  symptoms  are  a  transformation  of  her  brother's  perver- 
sion; while  in  many  families  the  men  are  immoral,  the  women  pure 
and  refined  but  highly  nervous.  In  the  case  of  women  who  have  no 
defect  of  sexual  impulse   there   is  yet  the   same  pressure  of  civilized 


190  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

morality  pushing  them  into  neurotic  states.  It  is  a  terribly  serious 
injustice,  Freud  remarks,  that  the  civilized  standard  of  sexual  life  is 
the  same  for  all  persons,  because  though  some,  by  their  organization, 
may  easily  accept  it,  for  others  it  involves  the  most  difficult  psychic 
sacrifices.  The  unmarried  girl,  who  has  become  nervously  weak,  can- 
not be  advised  to  seek  relief  in  marriage,  for  she  must  be  strong  in 
order  to  "bear"  marriage,  while  we  urge  a  man  on  no  account  to 
marry  a  girl  who  is  not  strong.  The  married  woman  who  has  experi- 
enced the  deceptions  of  marriage  has  usually  no  way  of  relief  left 
but  by  abandoning  her  virtue.  "The  more  strenuously  she  has  been 
educated,  and  the  more  completely  she  has  been  subjected  to  the  demands 
of  civilization,  the  more  she  fears  this  way  of  escape,  and  in  the  conflict 
between  her  desires  and  her  sense  of  duty,  she  also  seeks  refuge — in 
neurosis.  Nothing  protects  her  virtue  so  surely  as  disease."  Taking  a 
still  wider  view  of  the  influence  of  the  narrow  "civilized"  conception  of 
sexual  morality  on  women,  Freud  finds  that  it  is  not  limited  to  the 
production  of  neurotic  conditions;  it  affects  the  whole  intellectual  apti- 
tude of  women.  Their  education  denies  them  any  occupation  with  sexual 
problems,  although  such  problems  are  so  full  of  interest  to  them,  for  it 
inculcates  the  ancient  prejudice  that  any  curiosity  in  such  matters  is 
unwomanly  and  a  proof  of  wicked  inclinations.  They  are  thus  terrified 
from  thinking,  and  knowledge  is  deprived  of  worth.  The  prohibition  to 
think  extends,  automatically  and  inevitably,  far  beyond  the  sexual 
sphere.  "I  do  not  believe,"  Freud  concludes,  "that  there  is  any  opposi- 
tion between  intellectual  work  and  sexual  activity  such  as  was  supposed 
by  Mbbius.  I  am  of  opinion  that  the  unquestionable  fact  of  the  intel- 
lectual inferiority  of  so  many  women  is  due  to  the  inhibition  of  thought 
imposed  upon  them  for  the  purpose  of  sexual  repression." 

It  is  only  of  recent  years  that  this  problem  has  been  realized  and 
faced,  though  solitary  thinkers,  like  Hinton,  have  been  keenly  conscious 
of  its  existence;  for  "sorrowing  virtue,"  as  Mrs.  Ella  Wheeler  Wilcox 
puts  it,  "is  more  ashamed  of  its  woes  than  unhappy  sin,  because  the 
world  has  tears  for  the  latter  and  only  ridicule  for  the  former."  "It  is 
an  almost  cynical  trait  of  our  age,"  Hellpach  wrote  a  few  years  ago, 
"that  it  is  constantly  discussing  the  theme  of  prostitution,  of  police 
control,  of  the  age  of  consent,  of  the  'white  slavery,'  and  passes  over  the 
moral  struggle  of  woman's  soul  without  an  attempt  to  answer  her  burn- 
ing questions." 

On  the  other  hand  we  find  medical  writers  not  only  asserting 
with  much  moral  fervor  that  sexual  intercourse  outside  marriage 
is  always  and  altogether  unnecessary,  but  declaring,  moreover,  the 
harmlessness  or  even  the  advantages  of  sexual  abstinence. 


THE   PROBLEM   OF   SEXUAL  ABSTINENCE.  191 

Ribbing,  the  Swedish  professor,  in  hia  Hygidne  Sexuelle,  advocates 
sexual  abstinence  outside  marriage,  and  asserts  its  harmlessness.  Gilles 
de  la  Tourette,  Fer§,  and  Augagneur  in  France  agree.  In  Germany  Fiir- 
bringer  (Senator  and  Kaminer,  Health  and  Disease  in  Relation  to  Mar- 
riage, vol.  i,  p.  228)  asserts  that  continence  is  possible  and  necessary, 
though  admitting  that  it  may,  however,  mean  serious  mischief  in  excep- 
tional cases.  Eulenburg  (Sexuale  Neuropathie,  p.  14)  doubts  whether 
anyone,  who  otherwise  lived  a  reasonable  life,  ever  became  ill,  or  more 
precisely  neurasthenic,  through  sexual  abstinence.  Hegar,  replying  to 
the  arguments  of  Bebel  in  his  well-known  book  on  women,  denies  that 
sexual  abstinence  can  ever  produce  satyriasis  or  nymphomania.  Nacke, 
who  has  frequently  discussed  the  problem  of  sexual  abstinence  (e.g., 
Archiv  fiir  Kriminal-Anthropologie,  1903,  Heft  1,  and  Seocual-Probleme, 
June,  1908),  maintains  that  sexual  abstinence  can,  at  most,  produce  rare 
and  slight  unfavorable  results,  and  that  it  is  no  more  likely  to  produce 
insanity,  even  in  predisposed  individuals,  than  are  the  opposite  extremes 
of  sexual  excess  and  masturbation.  He  adds  that,  so  far  as  his  own 
observations  are  concerned,  the  patients  in  asylums  suffer  scarcely  at  all 
from  their  compulsory  sexual  abstinence. 

It  is  in  England,  however,  that  the  virtues  of  sexual  abstinence 
have  been  most  loudly  and  emphatically  proclaimed,  sometimes  indeed 
with  considerable  lack  of  cautious  qualification.  Acton,  in  his  Repro- 
ductive Organsi,  sets  forth  the  traditional  English  view,  as  well  as  Beale 
in  his  Morality  and  the  Moral  Question.  A  more  distinguished  repre- 
sentative of  the  same  view  was  Paget,  who,  in  his  lecture  on  "Sexual 
Hypochondriasis,"  coupled  sexual  intercourse  with  "theft  or  lying."  Sir 
William  Gowers  (Syphilis  and  the  Nervous  System,  1892,  p.  126)  also 
proclaims  the  advantages  of  "unbroken  chastity,"  more  especially  as  a 
method  of  avoiding  syphilis.  He  is  not  hopeful,  however,  even  as  regards 
his  own  remedy,  for  he  adds:  "We  can  trace  small  ground  for  hope 
that  the  disease  will  thus  be  materially  reduced."  He  would  still,  how- 
ever, preach  chastity  to  the  individual,  and  he  does  so  with  all  the  ascetic 
ardor  of  a  mediaeval  monk.  "With  all  the  force  that  any  knowledge  I 
possess,  and  any  authority  I  have,  can  give,  I  assert  that  no  man  ever 
yet  was  in  the  slightest  degree  or  way  the  worse  for  continence  or  better 
for  incontinence.  From  the  latter  all  are  worse  morally;  a  clear 
majority  are  worse  physically;  and  in  no  small  number  the  result  is, 
and  ever  will  be,  utter  physical  shipwreck  on  one  of  the  many  rocks, 
sharp,  jagged-edged,  which  beset  the  way,  or  on  one  of  the  many  beds 
of  festering  slime  which  no  care  can  possibly  avoid."  In  America  the 
same  view  widely  prevails,  and  Dr.  J.  F.  Scott,  in  his  Sexual-Instinct 
(second  edition,  1908,  Ch.  Ill),  argues  very  vigorously  and  at  great 
length  in  favor  of  sexual  abstinence.     He  will  not  even  admit  that  there 


192  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   SEX. 

are  two  sides  to  the  question,  though  if  that  were  the  case,  the  length 
and  the  energy  of  his  arguments  would  be  unnecessary. 

Among  medical  authorities  who  have  discussed  the  question  of 
sexual  abstinence  at  length  it  is  not,  indeed,  usually  possible  to  find 
such  unqualified  opinions  in  its  favor  as  those  I  have  quoted.  There  can 
be  no  doubt,  however,  that  a  large  proportion  of  physicians,  not  exclud- 
ing prominent  and  distinguished  authorities,  when  casually  confronted 
with  the  question  whether  sexual  abstinence  is  harmless,  will  at  once 
adopt  the  obvious  path  of  least  resistance  and  reply:  Yes.  In  only  a 
few  cases  will  they  even  make  any  qualification  of  this  affirmative 
answer.  This  tendency  is  very  well  illustrated  by  an  inquiry  made  by 
Dr.  Ludwig  Jacobsohn,  of  St.  Petersburgh.  ("Die  Sexuelle  Enthaltsam- 
keit  im  Lichte  der  Medizin,"  St.  Petersburger  Medicinische  Wochen- 
schrift,  March  17,  1907).  He  wrote  to  over  two  hundred  distinguished 
Russian  and  German  professors  of  physiology,  neurology,  psychiatry, 
etc.,  asking  them  if  they  regarded  sexual  abstinence  as  harmless.  The 
majority  returned  no  answer ;  eleven  Russian  and  twenty-eight  Germans 
replied,  but  four  of  them  merely  said  that  "they  had  no  personal  experi- 
ence," etc.;  there  thus  remained  thirty- five.  Of  these  E.  Pfliiger,  of 
Bonn,  was  skeptical  of  the  advantage  of  any  propaganda  of  abstinence: 
"if  all  the  authorities  in  the  world  declared  the  harmlessness  of  absti- 
nence that  would  have  no  influence  on  youth.  Forces  are  here  in  play 
that  break  through  all  obstacles."  The  harmlessness  of  abstinence  was 
affirmed  by  Krapelin,  Cramer,  Gartner,  Tuczek,  Schottelius,  Gaffky, 
Finkler,  Selenew,  Lassar,  Seifert,  Gruber;  the  last,  however,  added  that 
he  knew  very  few  abstinent  young  men,  and  himself  only  considered 
abstinence  good  before  full  development,  and  intercourse  not  dangerous 
in  moderation  even  before  then.  Brieger  knew  cases  of  abstinence 
without  harmful  results,  but  himself  thought  that  no  general  opinion 
could  be  given.  Jiirgensen  said  that  abstinence  in  itself  is  not  harmful, 
but  that  in  some  cases  intercourse  exerts  a  more  beneficial  influence. 
Hoffmann  said  that  abstinence  is  harmless,  adding  that  though  it  cer- 
tainly leads  to  masturbation,  that  is  better  than  gonorrhoea,  to  say  noth- 
ing of  syphilis,  and  is  easily  kept  within  bounds.  Striimpell  replied 
that  sexual  abstinence  is  harmless,  and  indirectly  useful  as  preserving 
from  the  risk  of  venereal  disease,  but  that  sexual  intercourse,  being 
normal,  is  always  more  desirable.  Hensen  said  that  abstinence  is  not 
to  be  unconditionally  approved.  Rumpf  replied  that  abstinence  was  not 
harmful  for  most  before  the  age  of  thirty,  but  after  that  age  there  was 
a  tendency  to  mental  obsessions,  and  marriage  should  take  place  at 
twenty-five.  Leyden  also  considered  abstinence  harmless  until  towards 
thirty,  when  it  leads  to  psychic  anomalies,  especially  states  of  anxiety, 
and  a  certain  affectation.  Hein  replied  that  abstinence  is  harmless  for 
most,  but  in  some  leads  to  hysterical  manifestations  and  indirectly  to 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    SEXUAL   ABSTINENCE.  193 

bad  results  from  masturbation,  while  for  the  normal  man  abstinence 
cannot  be  directly  beneficial,  since  intercourse  is  natural.  Griitzner 
thought  that  abstinence  is  almost  never  harmful.  Nescheda  said  it  is 
harmless  in  itself,  but  harmful  in  so  far  as  it  leads  to  unnatural  modes 
of  gratification.  Neisser  believes  that  more  prolonged  abstinence  than 
is  now  usual  would  be  beneficial,  but  admitted  the  sexual  excitations  of 
our  civilization;  he  added  that  of  course  he  saw  no  harm  for  healthy 
men  in  intercourse.  Hoche  replied  that  abstinence  is  quite  harmless  in 
normal  persons,  but  not  always  so  in  abnormal  persons.  Weber  thought 
it  had  a  useful  influence  in  increasing  will-power.  Tarnowsky  said  it 
is  good  in  early  manhood,  but  likely  to  be  unfavorable  after  twenty-five. 
Orlow  replied  that,  especially  in  youth,  it  is  harmless,  and  a  man  should 
be  as  chaste  as  his  wife.  Popow  said  that  abstinence  is  good  at  all 
ages  and  preserves  the  energy.  Blumenau  said  that  in  adult  age  ab- 
stinence is  neither  normal  nor  beneficial,  and  generally  leads  to  mas- 
turbation, though  not  generally  to  nervous  disorders;  but  that  even 
masturbation  is  better  than  syphilis.  Tschiriew  saw  no  harm  in ' 
abstinence  up  to  thirty,  and  thought  sexual  weakness  more  likely  to 
follow  excess  than  abstinence.  Tschish  regarded  abstinence  as  beneficial 
rather  than  harmful  up  to  twenty-five  or  twenty-eight,  but  thought  it 
difficult  to  decide  after  that  age  when  nervous  alterations  seem  to  be 
caused.  Darkschewitcz  regarded  abstinence  as  harmless  up  to  twenty- 
five.  Frankel  said  it  was  harmless  for  most,  but  that  for  a  considerable 
proportion  of  people  intercourse  is  a  necessity.  Erb's  opinion  is 
regarded  by  Jacobsohn  as  standing  alone;  he  placed  the  age  below 
which  abstinence  is  harmless  at  twenty;  after  that  age  he  regarded  it 
as  injurious  to  health,  seriously  impeding  work  and  capacity,  while  in 
neurotic  persons  it  leads  to  still  more  serious  results.  Jacobsohn  con- 
cludes that  the  general  opinion  of  those  answering  the  inquiry  may  thus 
be  expressed:  "Youth  should  be  abstinent.  Abstinence  can  in  no  way 
injure  them ;  on  the  contrary,  it  is  beneficial.  If  our  young  people  will 
remain  abstinent  and  avoid  extra-conjugal  intercourse  they  will  main- 
tain a  high  ideal  of  love  and  preserve  themselves  from  venereal  diseases." 
The  harmlessness  of  sexual  abstinence  was  likewise  affirmed  in 
America  in  a  resolution  passed  by  the  American  Medical  Association  in 
1906.  The  proposition  thus  formally  accepted  was  thus  worded:  "Con- 
tinence is  not  incompatible  with  health."  It  ought  to  be  generally 
realized  that  abstract  propositions  of  this  kind  are  worthless,  because 
they  mean  nothing.  Every  sane  person,  when  confronted  by  the  demand 
to  boldly  affirm  or  deny  the  proposition,  "Continence  is  not  incompati- 
ble with  health,"  is  bound  to  affirm  it.  He  might  firmly  believe  that 
continence  is  incompatible  with  the  health  of  most  people,  and  that  pro- 
longed continence  is  incompatible  with  anyone's  health,  and  yet,  if  he 
is  to  be  honest  in  the  use  of  language,  it  would  be  impossible  for  him 

13 


194  PSYCHOLOGY  OF   SEX. 

to  deny  the  vague  and  abstract  proposition  that  "Continence  is  not 
incompatible  with  health."  Such  propositions  are  therefore  not  only 
without  value,  but  actually  misleading. 

It  is  obvious  that  the  more  extreme  and  unqualified  opinions  in 
favor  of  sexual  abstinence  are  based  not  on  medical,  but  on  what  the 
writers  regard  as  moral  considerations.  Moreover,  as  the  same  writers 
are  usually  equally  emphatic  in  regard  to  the  advantages  of  sexual  inter- 
course in  marriage,  it  is  clear  that  they  have  committed  themselves  to 
a  contradiction.  The  same  act,  as  Naeke  rightly  points  out,  cannot 
become  good  or  bad  according  as  it  is  performed  in  or  out  of  mar- 
riage. There  is  no  magic  efficacy  in  a  few  words  pronounced  by  a  priest 
or  a  government  official. 

Kemondino  (loc.  cit.)  remarks  that  the  authorities  who  have  com- 
mitted themselves  to  declarations  in  favor  of  the  unconditional  advan- 
tages of  sexual  abstinence  tend  to  fall  into  three  errors:  (1)  they 
generalize  unduly,  instead  of  considering  each  case  individually,  on  its 
own  merits;  (2)  they  fail  to  realize  that  human  nature  is  influenced 
by  highly  mixed  and  complex  motives  and  cannot  be  assumed  to  be 
amenable  only  to  motives  of  abstract  morality;  (3)  they  ignore  the 
great  army  of  masturbators  and  sexual  perverts  who  make  no  complaint 
of  sexual  suffering,  but  by  maintaining  a  rigid  sexual  abstinence,  so  far 
as  normal  relationships  are  concerned,  gradually  drift  into  currents 
whence  there  is  no  return. 

Between  those  who  unconditionally  affirm  or  deny  the  harm- 
lessness  of  sexual  abstinence  we  find  an  intermediate  party  of 
authorities  whose  opinions  are  more  qualified.  Many  of  those 
who  occupy  this  more  guarded  position  are  men  whose  opinions 
carry  much  weight,  and  it  is  probable  that  with  them  rather  than 
with  the  more  extreme  advocates  on  either  side  the  greater 
measure  of  reason  lies.  So  complex  a  question  as  this  cannot  be 
adequately  investigated  merely  in  the  abstract,  and  settled  by 
an  unqualified  negative  or  affirmative.  It  is  a  matter  in  which 
every  case  requires  its  own  special  and  personal  consideration. 

"Where  there  is  such  a  marked  opposition  of  opinion  truth  is  not 
exclusively  on  one  side,"  remarks  Lowenfeld  {Sexualleben  tmd  Nerven- 
leiden,  second  edition,  p.  40).  Sexual  abstinence  is  certainly  often 
injurious  to  neuropathic  persons.  (This  is  now  believed  by  a  large 
number  of  authorities,  and  was  perhaps  first  decisively  stated  by  Krafft- 
Ebing,  "Ueber  Neurosen  durch  Abstinenz,"  Jahrbiich  fur  Psychiatric, 
1889,    p.    1).     Lowenfeld    finds    no    special    proclivity   to   neurasthenia 


THE   PROBLEM   OP   SEXUAL  ABSTINENCE.  195 

among  the  Catholic  clergy,  and  when  it  does  occur,  there  is  no  reason 
to  suppose  a  sexual  causation.  "In  healthy  and  not  hereditarily  neuro- 
pathic men  complete  abstinence  is  possible  without  injury  to  the  nervous 
system."  Injurious  effects,  he  continues,  when  they  appear,  seldom 
occur  until  between  twenty-four  and  thirty-six  years  of  age,  and  even 
then  are  not  usually  serious  enough  to  lead  to  a  visit  to  a  doctor,  con- 
sisting mainly  in  frequency  of  nocturnal  emissions,  pain  in  testes  or 
rectum,  hyperesthesia  in  the  presence  of  women  or  of  sexual  ideas.  If, 
however,  conditions  arise  which  specially  stimulate  the  sexual  emotions, 
neurasthenia  may  be  produced.  Lowenfeld  agrees  with  Freud  and 
Gattel  that  the  neurosis  of  anxiety  tends  to  occur  in  the  abstinent, 
careful  examination  showing  that  the  abstinence  is.  a  factor  in  its  pro- 
duction in  both  sexes.  It  is  common  among  young  women  married  to 
much  older  men,  often  appearing  during  the  first  years  of  marriage. 
Under  special  circumstances,  therefore,  abstinence  can  be  injurious,  but 
on  the  whole  the  difficulties  due  to  such  abstinence  are  not  severe,  and 
they  only  exceptionally  call  forth  actual  disturbance  in  the  nervous  or 
psychic  spheres.  Moll  takes  a  similar  temperate  and  discriminating 
view.  He  regards  sexual  abstinence  before  marriage  as  the  ideal,  but 
points  out  that  we  must  avoid  any  doctrinal  extremes  in  preaching 
sexual  abstinence,  for  such  preaching  will  merely  lead  to  hypocrisy. 
Intercourse  with  prostitutes,  and  the  tendency  to  change  a  woman  like 
a  garment,  induce  loss  of  sensitiveness  to  the  spiritual  and  personal 
element  in  woman,  while  the  dangers  of  sexual  abstinence  must  no 
more  be  exaggerated  than  the  dangers  of  sexual  intercourse  (Moll, 
Libido  Sexualis,  1898,  vol.  i,  p.  848;  id.,  Kontrare  Sexualempfindung, 
1899,  p.  588).  Bloch  also  (in  a  chapter  on  the  question  of  sexual 
abstinence  in  his  Sexualleben  unserer  Zeit,  1908)  takes  a  similar  stand- 
point. He  advocates  abstention  during  early  life  and  temporary  absten- 
tion in  adult  life,  such  abstention  being  valuable,  not  only  for  the 
conservation  and  transformation  of  energy,  but  also  to  emphasize  the 
fact  that  life  contains  other  matters  to  strive  for  beyond  the  ends  of 
sex.  Redlich  {Hedisinische  Elinik,  1908,  No.  7)  also,  in  a  careful 
study  of  the  medical  aspects  of  the  question,  takes  an  intermediate 
standpoint  in  relation  to  the  relative  advantages  and  disadvantages  of 
sexual  abstinence.  "We  may  say  that  sexual  abstinence  is  not  a  condi- 
tion which  must,  under  all  circumstances  and  at  any  price,  be  avoided, 
though  it  is  true  that  for  the  majority  of  healthy  adult  persons  regular 
sexual  intercourse  is  advantageous,  and  sometimes  is  even  to  be  recom- 
mended." 

It  may  be  added  that  from  the  standpoint  of  Christian  religious 
morality  this  same  attitude,  between  the  extremes  of  either  party, 
recognizing  the  advantages  of  sexual  abstinence,  but  not  insisting  that 
they  shall   be  purchased  at  any  price,  has  also  found  representation. 


196  PSYCHOLOGY   OP   SEX. 

Thus,  in  England,  an  Anglican  clergyman,  the  Rev.  H.  Northcote 
(Christianity  and  Sex  Problems,  pp.  58,  60)  deals  temperately  and 
sympathetically  with  the  difficulties  of  sexual  abstinence,  and  is  by  no 
means  convinced  that  such  abstinence  is  always  an  unmixed  advan- 
tage; while  in  Germany  a  Catholic  priest,  Karl  Jentsch  (SexualethiJc, 
Sexualjustiz,  Sexualpolisei,  1900)  sets  himself  to  oppose  the  rigorous 
and  unqualified  assertions  of  Ribbing  in  favor  of  sexual  abstinence. 
Jentsch  thus  expresses  what  he  conceives  ought  to  be  the  attitude  of 
fathers,  of  public  opinion,  of  the  State  and  the  Church  towards  the 
young  man  in  this  matter:  "Endeavor  to  be  abstinent  until  marriage. 
Many  succeed  in  this.  If  you  can  succeed,  it  is  good.  But,  if  you  can- 
not succeed,  it  is  unnecessary  to  cast  reproaches  on  yourself  and  to 
regard  yourself  as  a  scoundrel  or  a  lost  sinner.  Provided  that  you  do 
not  abandon  yourself  to  mere  enjoyment  or  wantonness,  but  are  content 
with  what  is  necessary  to  restore  your  peace  of  mind,  self-possession, 
and  cheerful  capacity  for  work,  and  also  that  you  observe  the  precau- 
tions which  physicians  or  experienced  friends  impress  upon  you." 

When  we  thus  analyze  and  investigate  the  the  three  main 
streams  of  expert  opinions  in  regard  to  this  question  of  sexual 
abstinence — the  opinions  in  favor  of  it,  the  opinions  in  opposition 
to  it,  and  the  opinions  which  take  an  intermediate  course — we  can 
scarcely  fail  to  conclude  how  unsatisfactory  the  whole  discussion 
is.  The  state  of  "sexual  abstinence"  is  a  completely  vague  and 
indefinite  state.  The  indefinite  and  even  meaningless  character 
of  the  expression  "sexual  abstinence"  is  shown  by  the  frequency 
with  which  those  who  argue  about  it  assume  that  it  can,  may,  or 
even  must,  involve  masturbation.  That  fact  alone  largely  de- 
prives it  of  value  as  morality  and  altogether  as  abstinence.  At 
this  point,  indeed,  we  reach  the  most  fundamental  criticism  to 
which  the  conception  of  "sexual  abstinence"  lies  open.  Eohleder, 
an  experienced  physician  and  a  recognized  authority  on  questions 
of  sexual  pathology,  has  submitted  the  current  views  on  "sexual 
abstinence"  to  a  searching  criticism  in  a  lengthy  and  important 
paper.1  He  denies  altogether  that  strict  sexual  abstinence  exists 
at  all.  "Sexual  abstinence,"  he  points  out,  in  any  strict  scense 
of  the  term,  must  involve  abstinence  not  merely  from  sexual 
intercourse  but  from  auto-erotic  manifestations,  from  masturba- 


i  "Die   Abstinentia  Sexuaiis,"   Zeitsehrift  filr  Sexuahcissenchaft, 
Nov.,  1908. 


THE    PROBLEM    OF   SEXUAL   ABSTINENCE.  197 

tion,  from  homosexual  acts,  from  all  sexually  perverse  practices. 
It  must  further  involve  a  permanent  abstention  from  indulgence 
in  erotic  imaginations  and  voluptuous  reverie.  When,  however, 
it  is  possible  thus  to  render  the  whole  psychic  field  a  tabula  rasa 
so  far  as  sexual  activity  is  concerned — and  if  it  fails  to  be  so  con- 
stantly and  consistently  there  is  no  strict  sexual  abstinence — 
then,  Eohleder  points  out,  we  have  to  consider  whether  we  are  not 
in  presence  of  a  case  of  sexual  anaesthesia,  of  anaphrodisia 
sexualis.  That  is  a  question  which  is  rarely,  if  ever,  faced  by 
those  who  discuss  sexual  abstinence.  It  is,  however,  an  extremely 
pertinent  question,  because,  as  Eohleder  insists,  if  sexual  anses- 
thesia  exists  the  question  of  sexual  abstinence  falls  to  the  ground, 
for  we  can  only  "abstain"  from  actions  that  are  in  our  power. 
Complete  sexual  anaesthesia  is,  however,  so  rare  a  state  that  it 
may  be  practically  left  out  of  consideration,  and  as  the  sexual 
impulse,  if  it  exists,  must  by  physiological  necessity  sometimes 
become  active  in  some  shape — even  if  only,  according  to  Freud's 
view,  by  transformation  into  some  morbid  neurotic  condition — - 
we  reach  the  conclusion  that  "sexual  abstinence"  is  strictly 
impossible.  Eohleder  has  met  with  a  few  cases  in  which  there 
seemed  to  him  no  escape  from  the  conclusion  that  sexual  ab- 
stinence existed,  but  in  all  of  these  he  subsequently  found  that  he 
was  mistaken,  usually  owing  to  the  practice  of  masturbation, 
which  he  believes  to  be  extremely  common  and  very  frequently 
accompanied  by  a  persistent  attempt  to  deceive  the  physician 
concerning  its  existence.  The  only  kind  of  "sexual  abstinence" 
that  exists  is  a  partial  and  temporary  abstinence.  Instead  of 
saying,  as  some  say,  "Permanent  abstinence  is  unnatural  and 
cannot  exist  without  physical  and  mental  injury,"  we  ought  to 
say,  Eohleder  believes,  "Permanent  abstinence  is  unnatural  and 
has  never  existed." 

It  is  impossible  not  to  feel  as  we  contemplate  this  chaotic 
mass  of  opinions,  that  the  whole  discussion  is  revolving  round  a 
purely  negative  idea,  and  that  fundamental  fact  is  responsible 
for  what  at  first  seem  to  be  startling  conflicts  of  statement.  If 
indeed  we  were  to  eliminate  what  is  commonly  regarded  as  the 
religious   and  moral   aspect  of  the  matter — an   aspect,  be   it 


198  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   SEX. 

remembered,  which  has  no  bearing  on  the  essential  natural  facts 
of  the  question — we  cannot  fail  to  perceive  that  these  ostenta- 
tious differences  of  conviction  would  be  reduced  within  very 
narrow  and  trifling  limits. 

We  cannot  strictly  coordinate  the  impulse  of  reproduction 
with  the  impulse  of  nutrition.  There  are  very  important  differ- 
ences between  them,  more  especially  the  fundamental  difference 
that  while  the  satisfaction  of  the  one  impulse  is  absolutely  neces- 
sary both  to  the  life  of  the  individual  and  of  the  race,  the  satis- 
faction of  the  other  is  absolutely  necessary  only  to  the  life  of 
the  race.  But  when  we  reduce  this  question  to  one  of  "sexual 
abstinence"  we  are  obviously  placing  it  on  the  same  basis  as  that 
of  abstinence  from  food,  that  is  to  say  at  the  very  opposite  pole 
to  which  we  place  it  when  (as  in  the  previous  chapter)  we  con- 
sider it  from  the  point  of  view  of  asceticism  and  chastity.  It 
thus  comes  about  that  on  this  negative  basis  there  really  is  an 
interesting  analogy  between  nutritive  abstinence,  though  neces- 
sarily only  maintained  incompletely  and  for  a  short  time,  and 
sexual  abstinence,  maintained  more  completely  and  for  a  longer 
time.  A  patient  of  Janet's  seems  to  bring  out  clearly  this  resem- 
blance. Nadia,  whom  Janet  was  able  to  study  during  five  years, 
was  a  young  woman  of  twenty-seven,  healthy  and  intelligent,  not 
suffering  from  hysteria  nor  from  anorexia,  for  she  had  a  normal 
appetite.  But  she  had  an  idea;  she  was  anxious  to  be  slim  and 
to  attain  this  end  she  cut  down  her  meals  to  the  smallest  size, 
merely  a  little  soup  and  a  few  eggs.  She  suffered  much  from  the 
abstinence  she  thus  imposed  on  herself,  and  was  always  hungry, 
though  sometimes  her  hunger  was  masked  by  the  inevitable 
stomach  trouble  caused  by  so  long  a  persistence  in  this  regime. 
At  times,  indeed,  she  had  been  so  hungry  that  she  had  devoured 
greedily  whatever  she  could  lay  her  hands  on,  and  not  infre- 
quently she  could  not  resist  the  temptation  to  eat  a  few  biscuits 
in  secret.  Such  actions  caused  her  horrible  remorse,  but,  all  the 
same,  she  would  be  guilty  of  them  again.  She  realized  the  great 
efforts  demanded  by  her  way  of  life,  and  indeed  looked  upon  her- 
self as  a  heroine  for  resisting  so  long.  "Sometimes,"  she  told 
Janet,  "I  passed  whole  hours  in  thinking  about  food,  I  was  so 


THE   PROBLEM   OE   SEXUAL  ABSTINENCE.  199 

hungry.  I  swallowed  my  saliva,  I  bit  my  handkerchief,  I  rolled 
on  the  ground,  I  wanted  to  eat  so  badly.  I  searched  books  for 
descriptions  of  meals  and  feasts,  I  tried  to  deceive  my  hunger 
by  imagining  that  I  too  was  enjoying  all  these  good  things.  I 
was  really  famished,  and  in  spite  of  a  few  weaknesses  for  biscuits 
I  know  that  I  showed  much  courage."1  Nadia's  motive  idea, 
that  she  wished  to  be  slim,  corresponds  to  the  abstinent  man's 
idea  that  he  wishes  to  be  "moral,"  and  only  differs  from  it  by 
having  the  advantage  of  being  somewhat  more  positive  and  per- 
sonal, for  the  idea  of  the  person  who  wishes  to  avoid  sexual 
indulgence  because  it  is  "not  right"  is  often  not  merely  negative 
but  impersonal  and  imposed  by  the  social  and  religious  environ- 
ment. Nadia's  occasional  outbursts  of  reckless  greediness  cor- 
respond to  the  sudden  impulses  to  resort  to  prostitution,  and  her 
secret  weaknesses  for  biscuits,  followed  by  keen  remorse,  to  lapses 
into  the  habit  of  masturbation.  Her  fits  of  struggling  and 
rolling  on  the  ground  are  precisely  like  the  outbursts  of  futile 
desire  which  occasionally  occur  to  young  abstinent  men  and 
women  in  health  and  strength.  The  absorption  in  thoughts 
about  meals  and  in  literary  descriptions  of  meals  is  clearly 
analogous  to  the  abstinent  man's  absorption  in  wanton  thoughts 
and  erotic  books.  Finally,  ISTadia's  conviction  that  she  is  a 
heroine  corresponds  exactly  to  the  attitude  of  self-righteousness 
which  often  marks  the  sexually  abstinent. 

If  we  turn  to  Freud's  penetrating  and  suggestive  study  of 
the  problem  of  sexual  abstinence  in  relation  to  "civilized"  sexual 
morality,  we  find  that,  though  he  makes  no  reference  to  the 
analogy  with  abstinence  from  food,  his  words  would  for  the  most 
part  have  an  equal  application  to  both  cases.  "The  task  of  sub- 
duing so  powerful  an  instinct  as  the  sexual  impulse,  otherwise 
than  by  giving  it  satisfaction,"  he  writes,  "is  one  which  may 
employ  the  whole  strength  of  a  man.  Subjugation  through  sub- 
limation, by  guiding  the  sexual  forces  into  higher  civilizational 
paths,  may  succeed  with  a  minority,  and  even  with  these  only  for 
a  time,  least  easily  during  the  years  of  ardent  youthful  energy. 

i  P.  Janet,  "La  Maladie  du  Scrupule,"  Revue  Philosophique,  May, 
1901. 


200  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   SEX. 

Most  others  become  neurotic  or  otherwise  come  to  grief.  Ex- 
perience shows  that  the  majority  of  people  constituting  our 
society  are  constitutionally  unequal  to  the  task  of  abstinence. 
We  say,  indeed,  that  the  struggle  with  this  powerful  impulse  and 
the  emphasis  the  struggle  involves  on  the  ethical  and  assthetic 
forces  in  the  soul's  life  'steels'  the  character,  and  for  a  few 
favorably  organized  natures  this  is  true ;  it  must  also  be  acknowl- 
edged that  the  differentiation  of  individual  character  so  marked 
in  our  time  only  becomes  possible  through  sexual  limitations. 
But  in  by  far  the  majority  of  cases  the  struggle  with  sensuality 
uses  up  the  available  energy  of  character,  and  this  at  the  very 
time  when  the  young  man  needs  all  his  strength  in  order  to  win 
his  place  in  the  world."1 

When  we  have  put  the  problem  on  this  negative  basis  of 
abstinence  it  is  difficult  to  see  how  we  can  dispute  the  justice  of 
Ereud's  conclusions.  They  hold  good  equally  for  abstinence 
from  food  and  abstinence  from  sexual  love.  When  we  have 
placed  the  problem  on  a  more  positive  basis,  and  are  able  to 
invoke  the  more  active  and  fruitful  motives  of  asceticism  and 
chastity  this  unfortunate  fight  against  a  natural  impulse  is 
abolished.  If  chastity  is  an  ideal  of  the  harmonious  play  of  all 
the  organic  impulses  of  the  soul  and  body,  if  asceticism,  properly 
understood,  is  the  athletic  striving  for  a  worthy  object  which 
causes,  for  the  time,  an  indifference  to  the  gratification  of  sexual 
impulses,  we  are  on  wholesome  and  natural  ground,  and  there  is 
no  waste  of  energy  in  fruitless  striving  for  a  negative  end, 
whether  imposed  artificially  from  without,  as  it  usually  is,  or 
voluntarily  chosen  by  the  individual  himself. 


i  S.  Freud,  Sexual-Problem®,  March,  1908.  As  Adele  Schreiber  also 
points  out  [Mutterschuts,  Jan.,  1907,  p.  30),  it  is  not  enough  to  prove 
that  abstinence  is  not  dangerous ;  we  have  to  remember  that  the  spiritual 
and  physical  energy  used  up  in  repressing  this  mighty  instinct  often 
reduces  a  .joyous  and  energetic  nature  to  a  weary  and  faded  shadow. 
Similarly,  Helene  Stocker  (Die  Liebe  und  die  Frauen,  p.  105)  says: 
"The  question  whether  abstinence  is  harmful  is,  to  say  the  truth,  a 
ridiculous  question.  One  needs  to  be  no  nervous  specialist  to  know,  as 
a  matter  of  course,  that  a  life  of  happy  love  and  marriage  is  the  healthy 
life,  and  its  complete  absence  cannot  fail  to  lead  to  severe  psychic  depres- 
sion, even  if  no  direct  physiological  disturbances  can  be  demonstrated." 


THE   PROBLEM   OF   SEXUAL  ABSTINENCE.  201 

For  there  is  really  no  complete  analogy  between  sexual 
desire  and  hunger,  between  abstinence  from  sexual  relations  and 
abstinence  from  food.  When  we  put  them  both  on  the  basis  of 
abstinence  we  put  them  on  a  basis  which  covers  the  impulse  for 
food  but  only  half  covers  the  impulse  for  sexual  love.  We  con- 
fer no  pleasure  and  no  service  on  our  food  when  we  eat  it.  But 
the  half  of  sexual  love,  perhaps  the  most  important  and  ennobling 
half,  lies  in  what  we  give  and  not  in  what  we  take.  To  reduce 
this  question  to  the  low  level  of  abstinence,  is  not  only  to  centre 
it  in  a  merely  negative  denial  but  to  make  it  a  solely  self-regard- 
ing question.  Instead  of  asking:  How  can  I  bring  joy  and 
strength  to  another  ?  we  only  ask :  How  can  I  preserve  my  empty 
virtue  ? 

Therefore  it  is  that  from  whatever  aspect  we  consider  the 
question, — whether  in  view  of  the  flagrant  contradiction  between 
the  authorities  who  ha?e  discussed  this  question,  or  of  the 
illegitimate  mingling  here  of  moral  and  physiological  considera- 
tions, or  of  the  merely  negative  and  indeed  unnatural  character 
of  the  "virtue"  thus  set  up,  or  of  the  failure  involved  to  grasp 
the  ennoblingly  altruistic  and  mutual  side  of  sexual  love, — from 
whatever  aspect  we  approach  the  problem  of  "sexual  abstinence" 
we  ought  only  to  agree  to  do  so  under  protest. 

If  we  thus  decide  to  approach  it,  and  if  we  have  reached 
the  conviction — which,  in  view  of  all  the  evidence  we  can 
scarcely  escape — that,  while  sexual  abstinence  in  so  far  as  it  may 
be  recognized  as  possible  is  not  incompatible  with  health,  there 
are  yet  many  adults  for  whom  it  is  harmful,  and  a  very  much 
larger  number  for  whom  when  prolonged  it  is  undesirable,  we 
encounter  a  serious  problem.  It  is  a  problem  which  confronts 
any  person,  and  especially  the  physician,  who  may  be  called  upon 
to  give  professional  advice  to  his  fellows  on  this  matter.  If 
sexual  relationships  are  sometimes  desirable  for  unmarried  per- 
sons, or  for  married  persons  who,  for  any  reason,  are  debarred 
from  conjugal  union,  is  a  physician  justified  in  recommending 
such  sexual  relationships  to  his  patient  ?  This  is  a  question  that 
has  frequently  been  debated  and  decided  in  opposing  senses. 


202  PSYCHOLOGY    OF   SEX. 

Various  distinguished  physicians,  especially  in  Germany,  have 
proclaimed  the  duty  of  the  doctor  to  recommend  sexual  intercourse  to 
his  patient  whenever  he  considers  it  desirable.  Gyurkovechky,  for 
instance,  has  fully  discussed  this  question,  and  answered  it  in  the 
affirmative.  Nystrom  (Sexual-Probleme,  July,  1908,  p.  413)  states  that 
it  is  the  physician's  duty,  in  some  cases  of  sexual  weakness,  when  all 
other  methods  of  treatment  have  failed,  to  recommend  sexual  inter- 
course as  the  best  remedy.  Dr.  Max  Marcuse  stands  out  as  a  con- 
spicuous advocate  of  the  unconditional  duty  of  the  physician  to 
advocate  sexual  intercourse  in  some  cases,  both  to  men  and  to  women, 
and  has  on  many  occasions  argued  in  this  sense  {e.gv  Darf  der  Arzt 
zum  Ausserehelichen  Geschlechtsverkehr  raten?  1904).  Marcuse  is 
strongly  of  opinion  that  a  physician  who,  allowing  himself  to  be 
influenced  by  moral,  sociological,  or  other  considerations,  neglects  to 
recommend  sexual  intercourse  when  he  considers  it  desirable  for  the 
patient's  health,  is  unworthy  of  his  profession,  and  should  either  give 
up  medicine  or  send  his  patients  to  other  doctors.  This  attitude,  though 
not  usually  so  emphatically  stated,  seems  to  be  widely  accepted. 
Lederer  goes  even  further  when  he  states  (Monatsschrift  fiir  Earn- 
krankheiten  und  Sexuelle  Hygiene,  1906,  Heft  3)  that  it  is  the  physi- 
cian's duty  in  the  case  of  a  woman  who  is  suffering  from  her  husband's 
impotence,  to  advise  her  to  h'ave  intercourse  with  another  man,  adding 
that  "whether  she  does  so  with  her  husband's  consent  is  no  affair  of 
the  physician's,  for  he  is  not  the  guardian  of  morality,  but  the  guardian 
of  health."  The  physicians  who  publicly  take  this  attitude  are,  how- 
ever, a  small  minority.  In  England,  so  far  as  I  am  aware,  no  physician 
of  eminence  has  openly  proclaimed  the  duty  of  the  doctor  to  advise 
sexual  intercourse  outside  marriage,  although,  it  is  scarcely  necessary 
to  add,  in  England,  as  elsewhere,  it  happens  that  doctors,  including 
women  doctors,  from  time  to  time  privately  point  out  to  their  unmar- 
ried and  even  married  patients,  that  sexual  intercourse  would  probably 
be  beneficial. 

The  duty  of  the  physician  to  recommend  sexual  intercourse  has 
been  denied  as  emphatically  as  it  has  been  affirmed.  Thus  Eulenburg 
{Sexuale  'Neuropathie,  p.  43),  would  by  no  means  advise  extra-conjugal 
relations  to  his  patient;  "such  advice  is  quite  outside  the  physician's 
competence."  It  is,  of  course,  denied  by  those  who  regard  sexual 
abstinence  as  always  harmless,  if  not  beneficial.  But  it  is  also  denied 
by  many  who  consider  that,  under  some  circumstances,  sexual  inter- 
course would  do  good. 

Moll  has  especially,  and  on  many  occasions,  discussed  the  duty  of 
the  physician  in  relation  to  the  question  of  advising  sexual  intercourse 
outside  marriage  {e.g.,  in  his  comprehensive  work,  Aerztliche  Ethik, 
1902;     also  Zeitschrift  fiir  Aertzliche  Fortbildung,   1905,  Nos.    12-15; 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    SEXUAL   ABSTINENCE.  203 

M  utter  schuts,  1905,  Heft  3;  Geschlecht  und  Gesellschaft,  vol.  ii,  Heft 
8 ) .  At  the  outset  Moll  had  been  disposed  to  assert  the  right  of  the 
physician  to  recommend  sexual  intercourse  under  some  circumstances; 
"so  long  as  marriage  is  unduly  delayed  and  sexual  intercourse  outside 
marriage  exists,"  he  wrote  (Die  Contrare  Bexualempfindung,  second 
edition,  p.  287),  "so  long,  I  think,  we  may  use  such  intercourse 
therapeutically,  provided  that  the  rights  of  no  third  person  (husband 
or  wife)  are  injured."  In  all  his  later  writings,  however,  Moll  ranges 
himself  clearly  and  decisively  on  the  opposite  side.  He  considers  that 
the  physician  has  no  right  to  overlook  the  possible  results  of  his  advice 
in  inflicting  venereal  disease,  or,  in  the  case  of  a  woman,  pregnancy,  on 
his  patient,  and  he  believes  that  these  serious  results  are  far  more 
likely  to  happen  than  is  always  admitted  by  those  who  defend  the 
legitimacy  of  such  advice.  Nor  will  Moll  admit  that  the  physician  is 
entitled  to  overlook  the  moral  aspects  of  the  question.  A  physician 
may  know  that  a  poor  man  could  obtain  many  things  good  for  his 
health  by  stealing,  but  he  cannot  advise  him  to  steal.  Moll  takes  the 
case  of  a  Catholic  priest  who  is  suffering  from  neurasthenia  due  to 
sexual  abstinence.  Even  although  the  physician  feels  certain  that  the 
priest  may  be  able  to  avoid  all  the  risks  of  disease  as  well  as  of  pub- 
licity, he  is  not  entitled  to  urge  him  to  sexual  intercourse.  He  has  to 
remember  that  in  thus  causing  a  priest  to  break  his  vows  of  chastity 
he  may  induce  a  mental  conflict  and  a  bitter  remorse  which  may  lead 
to  the  worst  results,  even  on  his  patient's  physical  health.  Similar 
results,  Moll  remarks,  may  follow  such  advice  when  given  to  a  married 
man  or  woman,  to  say  nothing  of  possible  divorce  proceedings  and 
accompanying  evils. 

Rohleder  {Vorlesungen  iiber  Geschlechtstrieb  und  Gesamtes  Gesch- 
lechtsleben  der  Menschen)  adopts  a  somewhat  qualified  attitude  in  this 
matter.  As  a  general  rule  he  is  decidedly  against  recommending 
sexual  intercourse  outside  marriage  to  those  who  are  suffering  from 
partial  or  temporary  abstinence  (the  only  form  of  abstinence  he  recog- 
nizes ) ,  partly  on  the  ground  that  the  evils  of  abstinence  are  not  serious 
or  permanent,  and  partly  because  the  patient  is  fairly  certain  to  exer- 
cise his  own  judgment  in  the  matter.  But  in  some  classes  of  cases  he 
recommends  such  intercourse,  and  notably  to  bisexual  persons,  on  the 
ground  that  he  is  thus  preserving  his  patient  from  the  criminal  risks 
of  homosexual  practices. 

It  seems  to  me  that  there  should  be  no  doubt  whatever  as  to 
the  correct  professional  attitude  of  the  physician  in  relation  to 
this  question  of  advice  concerning  sexual  intercourse.  The 
physician  is  never  entitled  to  advise  his  patient  to  adopt  sexual 


204  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   SEX. 

intercourse  outside  marriage  nor  any  method  of  relief  which  is 
commonly  regarded  as  illegitimate.  It  is  said  that  the  physician 
has  nothing  to  do  with  considerations  of  conventional  morality. 
If  he  considers  that  champagne  would  be  good  for  a  poor  patient 
he  ought  to  recommend  him  to  take  champagne;  he  is  not 
called  upon  to  consider  whether  the  patient  will  beg,  borrow,  or 
steal  the  champagne.  But,  after  all,  even  if  that  be  admitted,  it 
must  still  be  said  that  the  physician  knows  that  the  champagne, 
however  obtained,  is  not  likely  to  be  poisonous.  When,  however, 
he  prescribes  sexual  intercourse,  with  the  same  lofty  indifference 
to  practical  considerations,  he  has  no  such  knowledge.  In  giving 
such  a  prescription  the  physician  has  in  fact  not  the  slightest 
knowledge  of  what  he  may  be  prescribing.  He  may  be  giving 
his  patient  a  venereal  disease ;  he  may  be  giving  the  anxieties  and 
responsibilities  of  an  illegitimate  child ;  the  prescriber  is  quite  in 
the  dark.  He  is  in  the  same  position  as  if  he  had  prescribed  a 
quack  medicine  of  which  the  composition  was  unknown  to  him, 
with  the  added  disadvantage  that  the  medicine  may  turn  out  to  be 
far  more  potently  explosive  than  is  the  case  with  the  usually 
innocuous  patent  medicine.  The  utmost  that  a  physician  can 
properly  permit  himself  to  do  is  to  put  the  case  impartially  before 
his  patient  and  to  present  to  him  all  the  risks.  The  solution 
must  be  for  the  patient  himself  to  work  out,  as  best  he  can,  for 
it  involves  social  and  other  considerations  which,  while  they  are 
indeed  by  no  means  outside  the  sphere  of  medicine,  are  certainly 
entirely  outside  the  control  of  the  individual  private  practitioner 
of  medicine. 

Moll  also  is  of  opinion  that  this  impartial  presentation  of  the  ease 
for  and  against  sexual  intercourse  corresponds  to  the  physician's  duty 
in  the  matter.  It  is,  indeed,  a  duty  which  can  scarcely  be  escaped  by 
the  physician  in  many  cases.  Moll  points  out  that  it  can  by  no  means 
be  assimilated,  as  some  have  supposed,  with  the  recommendation  of 
sexual  intercourse.  It  is,  on  the  contrary,  he  remarks,  much  more 
analogous  to  the  physician's  duty  in  reference  to  operations.  He  puts 
before  the  patient  the  nature  of  the  operation,  its  advantages  and  its 
risks,  but  he  leaves  it  to  the  patient's  judgment  to  accept  or  reject  the 
operation.  Lewitt  also  (Geschlechtliclie  Enthaltsamkeit  und  Gesund- 
heitsstorungen,    1905),   after   discussing   the   various   opinions   on   this 


THE   PROBLEM    OF    SEXUAL   ABSTINENCE.  205 

question,  comes  to  the  conclusion  that  the  physician,  if  he  thinks  that 
intercourse  outside  marriage  might  be  beneficial,  should  explain  the 
difficulties  and  leave  the  patient  himself  to  decide. 

There  is  another  reason  why,  having  regard  to  the  prevailing 
moral  opinions  at  all  events  among  the  middle  classes,  a  physician 
should  refrain  from  advising  extra-conjugal  intercourse:  he 
places  himself  in  a  false  relation  to  his  social  environment.  He 
is  recommending  a  remedy  the  nature  of  which  he  could  not 
publicly  avow,  and  so  destroying  the  public  confidence  in  himself. 
The  only  physician  who  is  morally  entitled  to  advise  his  patients 
to  enter  into  extra-conjugal  relationships  is  one  who  openly 
acknowledges  that  he  is  prepared  to  give  such  advice.  The  doctor 
who  is  openly  working  for  social  reform  has  perhaps  won  the 
moral  right  to  give  advice  in  accordance  with  the  tendency  of  his 
public  activity,  but  even  then  his  advice  may  be  very  dubiously 
judicious,  and  he  would  be  better  advised  to  confine  his  efforts 
at  social  reform  to  his  public  activities.  The  voice  of  the  physi- 
cian, as  Professor  Max  Flesch  of  Frankfort  observes,  is  more  and 
more  heard  in  the  development  and  new  growth  of  social  institu- 
tions; he  is  a  natural  leaders  in  such  movements,  and  proposals 
for  reform  properly  come  from  him.  "But,"  as  Flesch  continues, 
"publicly  to  accept  the  excellence  of  existing  institutions  and  in 
the  privacy  of  the  consulting-room  to  give  advice  which  assumes 
the  imperfection  of  those  institutions  is  illogical  and  confusing. 
It  is  the  physician's  business  to  give  advice  which  is  in  accord- 
ance with  the  interests  of  the  community  as  a  whole,  and  those 
interests  require  that  sexual  relationships  should  be  entered  into 
between  healthy  men  and  women  who  are  able  and  willing  to 
accept  the  results  of  their  union.  That  should  be  the  physician's 
rule  of  conduct.  Only  so  can  he  become,  what  to-day  he  is  often 
proclaimed  to  be,  the  leader  of  the  nation.1"  This  view  is  not,  as 
we  see,  entirely  in  accord  with  that  which  assumes  that  the 
physician's  duty  is  solely  and  entirely  to  his  patient,  without 
regard  to  the  bearing  of  his  advice  on  social  conduct.  The 
patient's  interests  are  primary,  but  they  are  not  entitled  to  be 

i  Max  Flesch,  "Ehe,  Hygine  und  Sexuelle  Moral,"  Mutterschuts, 
1905,  Heft  7. 


206  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

placed  in  antagonism  to  the  interests  of  society.  The  advice 
given  by  the  wise  physician  must  always  be  in  harmony  with  the 
social  and  moral  tone  of  his  age.  Thus  it  is  that  the  tendency 
among  the  younger  generation  of  physicians  to-day  to  take  an 
active  interest  in  raising  that  tone  and  in  promoting  social 
reform — a  tendency  which  exists  not  only  in  Germany  where  such 
interests  have  long  been  acute,  but  also  in  so  conservative  a  land 
as  England — is  full  of  promise  for  the  future. 

The  physician  is  usually  content  to  consider  his  duty  to  his 
patient  in  relationship  to  sexual  abstinence  as  sufficiently  ful- 
filled when  he  attempts  to  allay  sexual  hypersesthesia  by  medical 
or  hygienic  treatment.  It  can  scarcely  be  claimed,  however,  that 
the  results  of  such  treatment  are  usually  satisfactory,  and  some- 
times indeed  the  treatment  has  a  result  which  is  the  reverse  of 
that  intended.  The  difficulty  generally  is  that  in  order  to  be 
efficacious  the  treatment  must  be  carried  to  an  extreme  which 
exhausts  or  inhibits  not  only  the  genital  activities  alone  but  the 
activities  of  the  whole  organism,  and  short  of  that  it  may  prove 
a  stimulant  rather  than  a  sedative.  It  is  difficult  and  usually 
impossible  to  separate  out  a  man's  sexual  activities  and  bring 
influence  to  bear  on  these  activities  alone.  Sexual  activity  is 
so  closely  intertwined  with  the  other  organic  activities,  erotic 
exuberance  is  so  much  a  flower  which  is  rooted  in  the  whole 
organism,  that  the  blow  which  crushes  it  may  strike  down  the 
whole  man.  The  bromides  are  universally  recognized  as  powerful 
sexual  sedatives,  but  their  influence  in  this  respect  only  makes 
itself  felt  when  they  have  dulled  all  the  finest  energies  of  the 
organism.  Physical  exercise  is  universally  recommended  to 
sexually  hypersesthetic  patients.  Yet  most  people,  men  and 
women,  find  that  physical  exercise  is  a  positive  stimulus  to  sexual 
activity.  This  is  notably  so  as  regards  walking,  and  exuberantly 
energetic  young  women  who  are  troubled  by  the  irritant  activity 
of  their  healthy  sexual  emotions  sometimes  spend  a  large  part  of 
their  time  in  the  vain  attempt  to  lull  their  activity  by  long  walks. 
Physical  exercise  only  proves  efficacious  in  this  respect  when  it  is 
carried  to  an  extent  which  produces  general  exhaustion.  Then 
indeed  the  sexual  activity  is  lulled,  but  so  are  all  the  mental  and 


THE   PROBLEM   OF   SEXUAL  ABSTINENCE.  207 

physical  activities.  It  is  undoubtedly  true  that  exercises  and 
games  of  all  sorts  for  young  people  of  both  sexes  have  a  sexually 
hygienic  as  well  as  a  generally  hygienic  influence  which  is 
undoubtedly  beneficial.  They  are,  on  all  grounds,  to  be  preferred 
to  prolonged  sedentary  occupations.  But  it  is  idle  to  suppose 
that  games  and  exercises  will  suppress  the  sexual  impulses,  for 
in  so  far  as  they  favor  health,  they  favor  all  the  impulses  that 
are  the  result  of  health.  The  most  that  can  be  expected  is  that 
they  may  tend  to  restrain  the  manifestations  of  sex  by  dispersing 
the  energy  they  generate. 

There  are  many  physical  rules  and  precautions  which  are 
advocated,  not  without  reason,  as  tending  to  inhibit  or  diminish 
sexual  activity.  The  avoidance  of  heat  and  the  cultivation  of 
cold  is  one  of  the  most  important  of  these.  Hot  climates,  a 
close  atmosphere,  heavy  bed-clothing,  hot  baths,  all  tend  power- 
fully to  excite  the  sexual  system,  for  that  system  is  a  peripheral 
sensory  organ,  and  whatever  stimulates  the  skin  generally, 
stimulates  the  sexual  system.1  Cold,  which  contracts  the  skin, 
also  deadens  the  sexual  feelings,  a  fact  which  the  ascetics  of  old 
knew  and  acted  upon.  The  garments  and  the  posture  of  the  body 
are  not  without  influence.  Constriction  or  pressure  in  the 
neighborhood  of  the  sexual  region,  even  tight  corsets,  as  well  as 
internal  pressure,  as  from  a  distended  bladder,  are  sources  of 
sexual  irritation.  Sleeping  on  the  back,  which  congests  the 
spinal  centres,  also  acts  in  the  same  way,  as  has  long  been  known 
by  those  who  attend  to  sexual  hygiene;  thus  it  is  stated  that  in 
the  Franciscan  order  it  is  prohibited  to  lie  on  the  back.  Food 
and  drink  are,  further,  powerful  sexual  stimulants.  This  is 
true  even  of  the  simplest  and  most  wholesome  nourishment,  but 
it  is  more  especially  true  of  flesh  meat,  and,  above  all,  of  alcohol 
in  its  stronger  forms  such  as  spirits,  liqueurs,  sparkling  and 
heavy  wines,  and  even  many  English  beers.  This  has  always 
been  clearly  realized  by  those  who  cultivate  asceticism,  and  it  is 
one  of  the  powerful  reasons  why  alcohol  should  not  be  given  in 
early  youth.  As  St.  Jerome  wrote,  when  telling  Eustochium 
that  she  must  avoid  wine  like  poison,  "wine  and  youth  are  the 
1  See  the  Section  on  Touch  in  the  fourth  volume  of  these  Studies. 


208  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

two  fires  of  lust.  Why  add  oil  to  the  flame  P"1  Idleness,  again, 
especially  when  combined  with  rich  living,  promotes  sexual 
activity,  as  Burton  sets  forth  at  length  in  his  Anatomy  of  Melan- 
choly, and  constant  occupation,  on  the  other  hand,  concentrates 
the  wandering  activities. 

Mental  exercise,  like  physical  exercise,  has  sometimes  been 
advocated  as  a  method  of  calming  sexual  excitement,  but  it  seems 
to  be  equally  equivocal  in  its  action.  If  it  is  profoundly  inter- 
esting and  exciting  it  may  stir  up  rather  than  lull  the  sexual 
emotions.  If  it  arouses  little  interest  it  is  unable  to  exert  any 
kind  of  influence.  This  is  true  even  of  mathematical  occupations 
which  have  been  advocated  by  various  authorities,  including 
Broussais,  as  aids  to  sexual  hygiene.2  "I  have  tried  mechanical 
mental  work/'  a  lady  writes,  "such  as  solving  arithmetical  or 
algebraic  problems,  but  it  does  no  good ;  in  fact  it  seems  only  to 
increase  the  excitement/'  "I  studied  and  especially  turned  my 
attention  to  mathematics,"  a  clergyman  writes,  "with  a  view  to 
check  my  sexual  tendencies.  To  a  certain  extent  I  was  success- 
ful. But  at  the  approach  of  an  old  friend,  a  voice  or  a  touch, 
these  tendencies  came  back  again  with  renewed  strength.  I 
found  mathematics,  however,  the  best  thing  on  the  whole  to  take 
off  my  attention  from  women,  better  than  religious  exercises 
which  I  tried  when  younger  (twenty-two  to  thirty)."  At  the 
best,  however,  such  devices  are  of  merely  temporary  efficacy. 

It  is  easier  to  avoid  arousing  the  sexual  impulses  than  to 
impose  silence  on  them  by  hygienic  measures  when  once  they  are 


i  "I  have  had  two  years'  close  experience  and  connexion  with  the 
Trappists,"  wrote  Dr.  Butterfield,  of  Natal  (British  Medical  Journal, 
Sept.  15,  1906,  p.  668),  "both  as  medical  attendant  and  as  being  a 
Catholic  in  creed  myself.  I  have  studied  them  and  investigated  their 
life,  habits  and  diet,  and  though  I  should  be  very  backward  in  adopting 
it  myself,  as  not  suited  to  me  individually,  the  great  bulk  of  them  are 
in  absolute  ideal  health  and  strength,  seldom  ailing,  capable  of  vast 
work,  mental  and  physical.  Their  life  is  very  simple  and  very  regular. 
A  healthier  body  of  men  and  women,  with  perfect  equanimity  of  tem- 
per— this  latter  I  lay  great  stress  on — it  would  be  difficult  to  find. 
Health  beams  in  their  eyes  and  countenance  and  actions.  Only  in  sick- 
ness or  prolonged  journeys  are  they  allowed  any  strong  foods — meats, 
eggs,  etc. — or  any  alcohol. 

2  Ferg,  L'Instinct  Sexuel,  second  edition,  p.  332. 


THE   PROBLEM  OF   SEXUAL  ABSTINENCE.  209 

aroused.  It  is,  therefore,  in  childhood  and  youth  that  all  these 
measures  may  be  most  reasonably  observed  in  order  to  avoid  any 
premature  sexual  excitement.  In  one  group  of  stolidly  normal 
children  influences  that  might  be  expected  to  act  sexually  pass 
away  unperceived.  At  the  other  extreme,  another  group  of 
children  are  so  neurotically  and  precociously  sensitive  that  no 
precautions  will  preserve  them  from  such  influences.  But 
between  these  groups  there  is  another,  probably  much  the  largest, 
who  resist  slight  sexual  suggestions  but  may  succumb  to  stronger 
or  longer  influences,  and  on  these  the  cares  of  sexual  hygiene  may 
profitably  be  bestowed.1 

After  puberty,  when  the  spontaneous  and  inner  voice  of  sex 
may  at  any  moment  suddenly  make  itself  heard,  all  hygienic 
precautions  are  liable  to  be  flung  to  the  winds,  and  even  the 
youth  or  maiden  most  anxious  to  retain  the  ideals  of  chastity  can 
often  do  little  but  wait  till  the  storm  has  passed.  It  sometimes 
happens  that  a  prolonged  period  of  sexual  storm  and  stress  occurs 
soon  after  puberty,  and  then  dies  away  although  there  has  been 
little  or  no  sexual  gratification,  to  be  succeeded  by  a  period  of 
comparative  calm.  It  must  be  remembered  that  in  many,  and 
perhaps  most,  individuals,  men  and  women,  the  sexual  appetite, 
unlike  hunger  or  thirst,  can  after  a  prolonged  struggle,  be  reduced 
to  a  more  or  less  quiescent  state  which,  far  from  injuring,  may 
even  benefit  the  physical  and  psychic  vigor  generally.  This  may 
happen  whether  or  not  sexual  gratification  has  been  obtained.  If 
there  has  never  been  any  such  gratification,  the  struggle  is  less 
severe  and  sooner  over,  unless  the  individual  is  of  highly  erotic 


i  Rural  life,  as  we  have  seen  when  discussing  its  relation  to  sexual 
precocity,  is  on  one  side  the  reverse  of  a  safeguard  against  sexual 
influences.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  in  so  far  as  it  involves  hard  work 
and  simple  living  under  conditions  that  are  not  nervously  stimulating, 
it  is  favorable  to  a  considerably  delayed  sexual  activity  in  youth  and 
to  a  relative  continence.  Ammon,  in  the  course  of  his  anthropological 
investigations  of  Baden  conscripts,  found  that  sexual  intercourse  was 
rare  in  the  country  before  twenty,  and  even  sexual  emissions  during 
sleep  rare  before  nineteen  or  twenty.  It  is  said,  also,  he  repeats,  that 
no  one  has  a  right  to  run  after  girls  who  does  not  yet  carry  a  gun, 
and  the  elder  lads  sometimes  brutally  ill-treat  any  younger  boy  found 
going  about  with  a  girl.  No  doubt  this  is  often  preliminary  to  much 
license  later. 


210  PSYCHOLOGY   OP    SEX. 

temperament.  If  there  has  been  gratification,  if  the  mind  is 
filled  not  merely  with  desires  but  with  joyous  experience  to  which 
the  body  also  has  grown  accustomed,  then  the  struggle  is  longer 
and  more  painfully  absorbing.  The  succeeding  relief,  however, 
if  it  comes,  is  sometimes  more  complete  and  is  more  likely  to  be 
associated  with  a  state  of  psychic  health.  For  the  fundamental 
experiences  of  life,  under  normal  conditions,  bring  not  only 
intellectual  sanity,  but  emotional  pacification.  A  conquest  of  the 
sexual  appetites  which  has  never  at  any  period  involved  a  grati- 
fication of  these  appetites  seldom  produces  results  that  commend 
themselves  as  rich  and  beautiful. 

In  these  combats  there  are,  however,  no  permanent  con- 
quests. For  a  very  large  number  of  people,  indeed,  though  there 
may  be  emotional  changes  and  fluctuations  dependent  on  a 
variety  of  circumstances,  there  can  scarcely  be  said  to  be  any 
conquest  at  all.  They  are  either  always  yielding  to  the  impulses 
that  assail  them,  or  always  resisting  those  impulses,  in  the  first 
case  with  remorse,  in  the  second  with  dissatisfaction.  In  either 
case  much  of  their  lives,  at  the  time  when  life  is  most  vigorous,  is 
wasted.  With  women,  if  they  happen  to  be  of  strong  passions 
and  reckless  impulses  to  abandonment,  the  results  may  be  highly 
enervating,  if  not  disastrous  to  the  general  psychic  life.  It  is  to 
this  cause,  indeed,  that  some  have  been  inclined  to  attribute  the 
frequent  mediocrity  of  women's  work  in  artistic  and  intellectual 
fields.  Women  of  intellectual  force  are  frequently  if  not  gen- 
erally women  of  strong  passions,  and  if  they  resist  the  tendency 
to  merge  themselves  in  the  duties  of  maternity  their  lives  are 
often  wasted  in  emotional  conflict  and  their  psychic  natures  im- 
poverished.1 


l  The  numerical  preponderance  which  celibate  women  teachers  have 
now  gained  in  the  American  school  system  has  caused  much  misgiving 
among  many  sagacious  observers,  and  is  said  to  be  unsatisfactory  in  its 
results  on  the  pupils  of  both  sexes.  A  distinguished  authority,  Pro- 
fessor McKeen  Cattell  ("The  School  and  the  Family,"  Popular  Science 
Monthly,  Jan.,  1909),  referring  to  this  preponderance  of  "devitalized 
and  unsexed  spinsters,"  goes  so  far  as  to  say  that  "the  ultimate  result 
of  letting  the  celibate  female  be  the  usual  teacher  has  been  such  as  to 
make  it  a  question  whether  it  would  not  be  an  advantage  to  the  country 
if  the  whole  school  plant  could  be  scrapped." 


THE   PROBLEM   OE   SEXUAL  ABSTINENCE.  211 

The  extent  to  which  sexual  abstinence  and  the  struggles  it  involves 
may  hamper  and  absorb  the  individual  throughout  life  is  well  illustrated 
in  the  following  case.  A  lady,  vigorous,  robust,  and  generally  healthy, 
of  great  intelligence  and  high  character,  has  reached  middle  life  without 
marrying,  or  ever  having  sexual  relationships.  She  was  an  only  child, 
and  when  between  three  and  four  years  of  age,  a  playmate  some  six 
years  older,  initiated  her  into  the  habit  of  playing  with  her  sexual 
parts.  She  was,  however,  at  this  age  quite  devoid  of  sexual  feelings, 
and  the  habit  dropped  naturally,  without  any  bad  effects,  as  soon  as  she 
left  the  neighborhood  of  this  girl  a  year  or  so  later.  Her  health  was 
good  and  even  brilliant,  and  she  developed  vigorously  at  puberty.  At 
the  age  of  sixteen,  however,  a  mental  shock  caused  menstruation  to 
diminish  in  amount  during  some  years,  and  simultaneously  with  this 
diminution  persistent  sexual  excitement  appeared  spontaneously,  for  the 
first  time.  She  regarded  such  feelings  as  abnormal  and  unhealthy,  and 
exerted  all  her  powers  of  self-control  in  resisting  them.  But  will  power 
had  no  effect  in  diminishing  the  feelings.  There  was  constant  and 
imperious  excitement,  with  the  sense  of  vibration,  tension,  pressure, 
dilatation  and  tickling,  accompanied,  it  may  be,  by  some  ovarian  con- 
gestion, for  she  felt  that  on  the  left  side  there  was  a  network  of  sexual 
nerves,  and  retroversion  of  the  uterus  was  detected  some  years  later. 
Her  life  was  strenuous  with  many  duties,  but  no  occupation  could  be 
pursued  without  this  undercurrent  of  sexual  hyperesthesia  involving 
perpetual  self-control.  This  continued  more  or  less  acutely  for  many 
years,  when  menstruation  suddenly  stopped  altogether,  much  before  the 
usual  period  of  the  climacteric.  At  the  same  time  the  sexual  excite- 
ment ceased,  and  she  became  calm,  peaceful,  and  happy.  Diminished 
menstruation  was  associated  with  sexual  excitement,  but  abundant 
menstruation  and  its  complete  absence  were  both  accompanied  by  the 
relief  of  excitement.  This  lasted  for  two  years.  Then,  for  the  treat- 
ment of  a  trifling  degree  of  anaemia,  she  was  subjected  to  a  long,  and, 
in  her  ease,  injudicious  course  of  hypodermic  injections  of  strychnia. 
From  that  time,  five  years  ago,  up  to  the  present,  there  has  been  con- 
stant sexual  excitement,  and  she  has  always  to  be  on  guard  lest  she 
should  be  overtaken  by  a  sexual  spasm.  Her  torture  is  increased  by  the 
fact  that  her  traditions  make  it  impossible  for  her  (except  under  very 
exceptional  circumstances)  to  allude  to  the  cause  of  her  sufferings.  "A 
woman  is  handicapped,"  she  writes.  "She  may  never  speak  to  anyone 
on  such  a  subject.  She  must  live  her  tragedy  alone,  smiling  as  much 
as  she  can  under  the  strain  of  her  terrible  burden."  To  add  to  her 
trouble,  two  years  ago,  she  felt  impelled  to  resort  to  masturbation,  and 
has  done  so  about  once  a  month  since;  this  not  only  brings  no  real 
relief,  and  leaves  irritability,  wakefulness,  and  dark  marks  under  the 
eyes,  but  is  a  cause  of  remorse  to  her,  for  she  regards  masturbation  as 


212  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   SEX. 

entirely  abnormal  and  unnatural.  She  lias  tried  to  gain  benefit,  not 
merely  by  the  usual  methods  of  physical  hygiene,  but  by  suggestion, 
Christian  Science,  etc.,  but  all  in  vain.  "I  may  say,"  she  writes,  "that 
it  is  the  most  passionate  desire  of  my  heart  to  be  freed  from  this  bond- 
age, that  I  may  relax  the  terrible  years-long  tension  of  resistance,  and 
be  happy  in  my  own  way.  If  I  had  this  affliction  once  a  month,  once 
a  week,  even  twice  a  week,  to  stand  against  it  would  be  child's  play.  I 
should  scorn  to  resort  to  unnatural  means,  however  moderately.  But 
self-control  itself  has  its  revenges,  and  I  sometimes  feel  as  if  it  is  no 
longer  to  be  borne." 

Thus  while  it  is  an  immense  benefit  in  physical  and  psychic 
development  if  the  eruption  of  the  disturbing  sexual  emotions  can 
be  delayed  until  puberty  or  adolescence,  and  while  it  is  a  very 
great  advantage,  after  that  eruption  has  occurred,  to  be  able  to 
gain  control  of  these  emotions,  to  crush  altogether  the  sexual 
nature  would  be  a  barren,  if  not,  indeed,  a  perilous  victory, 
bringing  with  it  no  satisfaction.  "If  I  had  only  had  three 
weeks'  happiness,"  said  a  woman,  "I  would  not  quarrel  with 
Fate,  but  to  have  one's  whole  life  so  absolutely  empty  is  horrible." 
If  such  vacuous  self-restraint  may,  by  courtesy,  be  termed  a 
virtue,  it  is  but  a  negative  virtue.  The  persons  who  achieve  it, 
as  the  result  of  congenitally  feeble  sexual  aptitudes,  merely  (as 
Gyurkovechky,  Fiirbringer,  and  Lowenfeld  have  all  alike  re- 
marked) made  a  virtue  of  their  weakness.  Many  others,  whose 
instincts  were  less  weak,  when  they  disdainfully  put  to  flight  the 
desires  of  sex  in  early  life,  have  found  that  in  later  life  that  foe 
returns  in  tenfold  force  and  perhaps  in  unnatural  shapes.1 


1  Corre  (Les  Crimdnels,  p.  351)  mentions  that  of  thirteen  priests 
convicted  of  crime,  six  were  guilty  of  sexual  attempts  on  children,  and 
of  eighty-three  convicted  lay  teachers,  forty-eight  had  committed  similar 
offenses.  This  was  at  a  time  when  lay  teachers  were  in  practice  almost 
compelled  to  live  a  celibate  life;  altered  conditions  have  greatly  dimin- 
ished this  class  of  offense  among  them.  Without  going  so  far  as  crime, 
many  moral  and  religious  men,  clergymen  and  others,  who  have  led 
severely  abstinent  lives  in  youth,  sometimes  experience  in  middle  age 
or  later  the  eruption  of  almost  uncontrollable  sexual  impulses,  normal 
or  abnormal.  In  women  such  manifestations  are  apt  to  take  the  form 
of  obsessional  thoughts  of  sexual  character,  as  e.g.,  the  case  (Comptes- 
Rendus  Congres  International  de  MMecine,  Moscow,  1897,  vol.  iv,  p.  27) 
of  a  chaste  woman  who  was  compelled  to  think  about  and  look  at  the 
sexual  organs  of  men. 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    SEXUAL   ABSTINENCE.  213 

The  conception  of  "sexual  abstinence"  is,  we  see,  an  entirely 
false  and  artificial  conception.  It  is  not  only  ill-adjusted  to  the 
hygienic  facts  of  the  case  but  it  fails  even  to  invoke  any 
genuinely  moral  motive,  for  it  is  exclusively  self -regarding  and 
self-centred.  It  only  becomes  genuinely  moral,  and  truly  inspir- 
ing, when  we  transform  it  into  the  altruistic  virtue  of  self- 
sacrifice.  When  we  have  done  so  we  see  that  the  element  of 
abstinence  in  it  ceases  to  be  essential.  "Self-sacrifice,"  writes  the 
author  of  a  thoughtful  book  on  the  sexual  life,  "is  acknowledged 
to  be  the  basis  of  virtue;  the  noblest  instances  of  self-sacrifice 
are  those  dictated  by  sexual  affection.  Sympathy  is  the  secret  of 
altruism ;  nowhere  is  sjnnpathy  more  real  and  complete  than  in 
love.  Courage,  both  moral  and  physical,  the  love  of  truth  and 
honor,  the  spirit  of  enterprise,  and  the  admiration  of  moral 
worth,  are  all  inspired  by  love  as  by  nothing  else  in  human 
nature.  Celibacy  denies  itself  that  inspiration  or  restricts  its 
influence,  according  to  the  measure  of  its  denial  of  sexual 
intimacy.  Thus  the  deliberate  adoption  of  a  consistently  celibate 
life  implies  the  narrowing  down  of  emotional  and  moral  experi- 
ence to  a  degree  which  is,  from  the  broad  scientific  standpoint, 
unjustified  by  any  of  the  advantages  piously  supposed  to  accrue 
from  it."1 

In  a  sane  natural  order  all  the  impulses  are  centred  in  the 
fulfilment  of  needs  and  not  in  their  denial.  Moreover,  in  this 
special  matter  of  sex,  it  is  inevitable  that  the  needs  of  others,  and 
not  merely  the  needs  of  the  individual  himself,  should  determine 
action.  It  is  more  especially  the  needs  of  the  female  which  are 
the  determining  factor;  for  those  needs  are  more  various,  com- 
plex and  elusive,  and  in  his  attentiveness  to  their  gratification 
the  male  finds  a  source  of  endless  erotic  satisfaction.  It  might 
be  thought  that  the  introduction  of  an  altruistic  motive  here  is 
merely  the  claim  of  theoretical  morality  insisting  that  there  shall 
be  a  firm  curb  on  animal  instinct.  But,  as  ^we  have  again  and 
again  seen  throughout  the  long  course  of  these  Studies,  it  is  not 
so.     The  animal  instinct  itself  makes  this  demand.     It  is  a 


1  J.  A.  Godfrey,  The  Science  of  Bex,  p.  138. 


214  PSYCHOLOGY   OF    SEX. 

biological  law  that  rules  throughout  the  zoological  world  and 
has  involved  the  universality  of  courtship.  In  man  it  is  only 
modified  because  in  man  sexual  needs  are  not  entirely  concen- 
trated in  reproduction,  but  more  or  less  penetrate  the  whole  of 
life. 

While  from  the  point  of  view  of  society,  as  from  that  of 
Nature,  the  end  and  object  of  the  sexual  impulse  is  procreation, 
and  nothing  beyond  procreation,  that  is  by  no  means  true  for  the 
individual,  whose  main  object  it  must  be  to  fulfil  himself  har- 
moniously with  that  due  regard  for  others  which  the  art  of  living 
demands.  Even  if  sexual  relationships  had  no  connection  with 
procreation  whatever — as  some  Central  Australian  tribes  believe 
— they  would  still  be  justifiable,  and  are,  indeed,  an  indispensable 
aid  to  the  best  moral  development  of  the  individual,  for  it  is  only 
in  so  intimate  a  relationship  as  that  of  sex  that  the  finest  graces 
and  aptitudes  of  life  have  full  scope.  Even  the  saints  cannot 
forego  the  sexual  side  of  life.  The  best  and  most  accomplished 
saints  from  Jerome  to  Tolstoy — even  the  exquisite  Francis  of 
Assisi — had  stored  up  in  their  past  all  the  experiences  that  go  to 
the  complete  realization  of  life,  and  if  it  were  not  so  they  would 
have  been  the  less  saints. 

The  element  of  positive  virtue  thus  only  enters  when  the 
control  of  the  sexual  impulse  has  passed  beyond  the  stage  of 
rigid  and  sterile  abstinence  and  has  become  not  merely  a  delib- 
erate refusal  of  what  is  evil  in  sex,  but  a  deliberate  acceptance  of 
what  is  good.  It  is  only  at  that  moment  that  such  control 
becomes  a  real  part  of  the  great  art  of  living.  For  the  art  of 
living,  like  any  other  art,  is  not  compatible  with  rigidity,  but  lies 
in  the  weaving  of  a  perpetual  harmony  between  refusing  and 
accepting,  between  giving  and  taking.1 

The  future,  it  is  clear,  belongs  ultimately  to  those  who  are 
slowly  building  up  sounder  traditions  into  the  structure  of  life. 
The  "problem  of  sexual  abstinence"  will  more  and  more  sink  into 
insignificance.  There  remain  the  great  solid  fact  of  love,  the 
great  solid  fact  of  chastity.     Those  are  eternal.     Between  them 


1  See,  e.g.,  Havelock  Ellis,  "St.  Francis  and  Others,"  Affirmations. 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    SEXUAL   ABSTINENCE.  215 

there  is  nothing  but  harmony.  The  development  of  one  involves 
the  development  of  the  other. 

It  has  been  necessary  to  treat  seriously  this  problem  of 
"sexual  abstinence"  because  we  have  behind  us  the  traditions  of 
two  thousand  years  based  on  certain  ideals  of  sexual  law  and 
sexual  license,  together  with  the  long  effort  to  build  up  practices 
more  or  less  conditioned  by  those  ideals.  We  cannot  immediately 
escape  from  these  traditions  even  when  we  question  their  validity 
for  ourselves.  We  have  not  only  to  recognize  their  existence,  but 
also  to  accept  the  fact  that  for  some  time  to  come  they  must  still 
to  a  considerable  extent  control  the  thoughts  and  even  in  some 
degree  the  actions  of  existing  communities. 

It  is  undoubtedly  deplorable.  It  involves  the  introduction 
of  an  artificiality  into  a  real  natural  order.  Love  is  real  and 
positive ;  chastity  is  real  and  positive.  But  sexual  abstinence  is 
unreal  and  negative,  in  the  strict  sense  perhaps  impossible.  The 
underlying  feelings  of  all  those  who  have  emphasized  its  impor- 
tance is  that  a  physiological  process  can  be  good  or  bad  according 
as  it  is  or  is  not  carried  out  under  certain  arbitrary  external  con- 
ditions, which  render  it  licit  or  illicit.  An  act  of  sexual  inter- 
course under  the  name  of  "marriage"  is  beneficial;  the  very 
same  act,  under  the  name  of  "incontinence,"  is  pernicious.  No 
physiological  process,  and  still  less  any  spiritual  process,  can 
bear  such  restriction.  It  is  as  much  as  to  say  that  a  meal  becomes 
good  or  bad,  digestible  or  indigestible,  according  as  a  grace  is  or 
is  not  pronounced  before  the  eating  of  it. 

It  is  deplorable  because,  such  a  conception  being  essentially 
unreal,  an  element  of  unreality  is  thus  introduced  into  a  matter 
of  the  gravest  concern  alike  to  the  individual  and  to  society. 
Artificial  disputes  have  been  introduced  where  no  matter  of  real 
dispute  need  exist.  A  contest  has  been  carried  on  marked  by  all 
the  ferocity  which  marks  contests  about  metaphysical  or  pseudo- 
metaphysical  differences  having  no  concrete  basis  in  the  actual 
world.  As  will  happen  in  such  cases,  there  has,  after  all,  been  no 
real  difference  between  the  disputants  because  the  point  they 
quarreled  over  was  unreal.  In  truth  each  side  was  right  and  each 
side  was  wrong. 


216  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   SEX. 

It  is  necessary,  we  see,  that  the  balance  should  be  held  even. 
An  absolute  license  is  bad;  an  absolute  abstinence — even  though 
some  by  nature  or  circumstances  are  urgently  called  to  adopt  it — 
is  also  bad.  They  are  both  alike  away  from  the  gracious  equilib- 
rium of  Nature.  And  the  force,  we  see,  which  naturally  holds 
this  balance  even  is  the  biological  fact  that  the  act  of  sexual  union 
is  the  satisfaction  of  the  erotic  needs,  not  of  one  person,  but  of 
two  persons. 


CHAPTEE  VII. 

PROSTITUTION. 

I.  The  Orgy: — The  Religious  Origin  of  the  Orgy — The  Feast  of 
Fools — Recognition  of  the  Orgy  by  the  Greeks  and  Romans — The  Orgy 
Among  Savages — The  Drama — The  Object  Subserved  by  the  Orgy. 

II.  The  Origin  and  Development  of  Prostitution: — The  Definition 
of  Prostitution — Prostitution  Among  Savages — The  Conditions  Under 
Which  Professional  Prostitution  Arises — Sacred  Prostitution — The  Rite 
of  Mylitta — The  Practice  of  Prostitution  to  Obtain  a  Marriage  Portion — 
The  Rise  of  Secular  Prostitution  in  Greece — Prostitution  in  the  East — 
India,  China,  Japan,  etc. — Prostitution  in  Rome — The  Influence  of 
Christianity  on  Prostitution — The  Effort  to  Combat  Prostitution — The 
Mediaeval  Brothel — The  Appearance  of  the  Courtesan — Tullia  D'Aragona 
— Veronica  Franco — Ninon  de  Lenclos — Later  Attempts  to  Eradicate 
Prostitution — The  Regulation  of  Prostitution — Its  Futility  Becoming 
Recognized. 

III.  The  Causes  of  Prostitution: — Prostitution  as  a  Part  of  the 
Marriage  System — The  Complex  Causation  of  Prostitution — The  Motives 
Assigned  by  Prostitutes —  ( 1 )  Economic  Factor  of  Prostitution — Poverty 
Seldom  the  Chief  Motive  for  Prostitution — But  Economic  Pressure  Exerts 
a  Real  Influence — The  Large  Proportion  of  Prostitutes  Recruited  from 
Domestic  Service — Significance  of  This  Fact — (2)  The  Biological  Factor 
of  Prostitution — The  So-called  Born-Prostitute — Alleged  Identity  with 
the  Born-Criminal — The  Sexual  Instinct  in  Prostitutes — The  Physical 
and  Psychic  Characters  of  Prostitutes — (3)  Moral  Necessity  as  a  Factor 
in  the  Existence  of  Prostitution — The  Moral  Advocates  of  Prostitution — 
The  Moral  Attitude  of  Christianity  Towards  Prostitution — The  Attitude 
of  Protestantism — Recent  Advocates  of  the  Moral  Necessity  of  Prostitu- 
tion—  (4)  Civilizational  Value  as  a  Factor  of  Prostitution — The  Influ- 
ence of  Urban  Life — The  Craving  for  Excitement — Why  Servant-girls  so 
Often  Turn  to  Prostitution — The  Small  Part  Played  by  Seduction — Pro- 
stitutes Come  Largely  from  the  Country — The  Appeal  of  Civilization 
Attracts  Women  to  Prostitution — The  Corresponding  Attraction  Felt  by 
Men — The  Prostitute  as  Artist  and  Leader  of  Fashion — The  Charm  of 
Vulgarity. 

IV.  The  Present  Social  Attitude  Towards  Prostitution : — The  Decay 
of  the  Brothel — The  Tendency  to  the  Humanization  of  Prostitution — 
The  Monetary  Aspects  of  Prostitution— The  Geisha— The  Hetaira— The 

(217)- 


218  PSYCHOLOGY   OF    SEX. 

Moral  Revolt  Against  Prostitution — Squalid  Vice  Based  on  Luxurious 
Virtue — The  Ordinary  Attitude  Towards  Prostitutes — Its  Cruelty  Absurd 
— The  Need  of  Reforming  Prostitution — The  Need  of  Reforming  Mar- 
riage— These  Two  Needs  Closely  Correlated — The  Dynamic  Relationships 
Involved. 

I.     The  Orgy. 

Traditional  morality,  religion,  and  established  convention 
combine  to  promote  not  only  the  extreme  of  rigid  abstinence  but 
also  that  of  reckless  license.  They  preach  and  idealize  the  one 
extreme;  they  drive  those  who  cannot  accept  it  to  adopt  the 
opposite  extreme.  In  the  great  ages  of  religion  it  even  happens 
that  the  severity  of  the  rule  of  abstinence  is  more  or  less  deliber- 
ately tempered  by  the  permission  for  occasional  outbursts  of 
license.  We  thus  have  the  orgy,  which  flourished  in  mediaeval 
days  and  is,  indeed,  in  its  largest  sense,  a  universal  manifestation, 
having  a  function  to  fulfil  in  every  orderly  and  laborious  civiliza- 
tion, built  up  on  natural  energies  that  are  bound  by  more  or  less 
inevitable  restraints. 

The  consideration  of  the  orgy,  it  may  be  said,  lifts  us  beyond 
the  merely  sexual  sphere,  into  a  higher  and  wider  region  which 
belongs  to  religion.  The  Greek  orgeia  referred'  originally  to 
ritual  things  done  with  a  religious  purpose,  though  later,  when 
dances  of  Bacchanals  and  the  like  lost  their  sacred  and  inspiring 
character,  the  idea  was  fostered  by  Christianity  that  such  things 
were  immoral.1  Yet  Christianity  was  itself  in  its  origin  an  orgy 
of  the  higher  spiritual  activities  released  from  the  uncongenial 
servitude  of  classic  civilization,  a  great  festival  of  the  poor  and 
the  humble,  of  the  slave  and  the  sinner.  And  when,  with  the 
necessity  for  orderly  social  organization,  Christianity  had  ceased 
to  be  this  it  still  recognized,  as  Paganism  had  done,  the  need  for 
an  occasional  orgy.  It  appears  that  in  743  at  a  Synod  held  in 
Hainault  reference  was  made  to  the  February  debauch  (de  Spur- 
calibus  in  februario)  as  a  pagan  practice;  yet  it  was  precisely 
this  pagan  festival  which  was  embodied  in  the  accepted  customs 
of  the  Christian  Church  as  the  chief  orgy  of  the  ecclesiastical 

1  See,  e.g.,  Cheetham's  Hulsean  Lectures,  The  Mysteries,  Pagan  and 
Christian,  pp.  123,  136. 


PROSTITUTION.  219 

year,  the  great  Carnival  prefixed  to  the  long  fast  of  Lent.  The 
celebration  on  Shrove  Tuesday  and  the  previous  Sunday  con- 
stituted a  Christian  Bacchanalian  festival  in  which  all  classes 
joined.  The  greatest  freedom  and  activity  of  physical  movement 
was  encouraged;  "some  go  about  naked  without  shame,  some 
crawl  on  all  fours,  some  on  stilts,  some  imitate  animals."1  As 
time  went  on  the  Carnival  lost  its  most  strongly  marked 
Bacchanalian  features,  but  it  still  retains  its  essential  character 
as  a  permitted  and  temporary  relaxation  of  the  tension  of  cus- 
tomary restraints  and  conventions.  The  Mediaeval  Feast  of 
Fools — a  New  Year's  Eevel  well  established  by  the  twelfth  cen- 
tury, mainly  in  France — presented  an  expressive  picture  of  a 
Christian  orgy  in  its  extreme  form,  for  here  the  most  sacred 
ceremonies  of  the  Church  became  the  subject  of  fantastic  parody. 
The  Church,  according  to  Nietzsche's  saying,  like  all  wise  legis- 
lators, recognized  that  where  great  impulses  and  habits  have  to  be 
cultivated,  intercalary  days  must  be  appointed  in  which  these 
impulses  and  habits  may  be  denied,  and  so  learn  to  hunger  anew.2 
The  clergy  took  the  leading  part  in  these  folk-festivals,  for  to 
the  men  of  that  age,  as  Meray  remarks,  "the  temple  offered  the 
complete  notes  of  the  human  gamut;  they  found  there  the 
teaching  of  all  duties,  the  consolation  of  all  sorrows,  the  satis- 


1  Hormayr's  Taschenbuch,  1835,  p.  255.  Hagelstange,  in  a  chapter 
on  mediaeval  festivals  in  his  Suddeutsches  Bauemleben  im  Mittelalter, 
shows  how,  in  these  Christian  orgies  which  were  really  of  pagan  origin, 
the  German  people  reacted  with  tremendous  and  boisterous  energy 
against  the  laborious  and  monotonous  existence  of  everyday  life. 

2  This  was  clearly  realized  by  the  more  intelligent  upholders  of  the 
Feast  of  Fools.  Austere  persons  wished  to  abolish  this  Feast,  and  in  a 
remarkable  petition  sent  up  to  the  Theological  Faculty  of  Paris  (and 
quoted  by  Flogel,  Oeschichte  des  Grotesk-Komischen,  fourth  edition,  p. 
204)  the  case  for  the  Feast  is  thus  presented:  "We  do  this  according  to 
ancient  custom,  in  order  that  folly,  which  is  second  nature  to  man  and 
seems  to  be  inborn,  may  at  least  once  a  year  have  free  outlet.  Wine 
casks  would  burst  if  we  failed  sometimes  to  remove  the  bung  and  let  in 
air.  Now  we  are  all  ill-bound  casks  and  barrels  which  would  let  out 
the  wine  of  wisdom  if  by  constant  devotion  and  fear  of  God  we  allowed 
it  to  ferment.  We  must  let  in  air  so  that  it  may  not  be  spoilt.  Thus 
on  some  days  we  give  ourselves  up  to  sport,  so  that  with  the  greater  zeal 
we  may  afterwards  return  to  the  worship  of  God."  The  Feast  of  Fools 
was  not  suppressed  until  the  middle  of  the  sixteenth  century,  and  relics 
of  it  persisted  (as  at  Aix)  till  near  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century. 


220  PSYCHOLOGY   OF    SEX. 

faction  of  all  joys.  The  sacred  festivals  of  mediaeval  Christianity 
were  not  a  survival  from  Eoman  times ;  they  leapt  from  the  very 
heart  of  Christian  society."1  But,  as  Meray  admits,  all  great 
and  vigorous  peoples,  of  the  East  and  the  West,  have  found  it 
necessary  sometimes  to  play  with  their  sacred  things. 

Among  the  Greeks  and  Eomans  this  need  is  everywhere 
visible,  not  only  in  their  comedy  and  their  literature  generally, 
but  in  everyday  life.  As  Nietzsche  truly  remarks  (in  his  Geburt 
der  Tragbdie)  the  Greeks  recognized  all  natural  impulses,  even 
those  that  are  seemingly  unworthy,  and  safeguarded  them  from 
working  mischief  by  providing  channels  into  which,  one  special 
clays  and  in  special  rites,  the  surplus  of  wild  energy  might  harm- 
lessly flow.  Plutarch,  the  last  and  most  influential  of  the 
Greek  moralists,  well  says,  when  advocating  festivals  (in  his 
essay  "On  the  Training  of  Children"),  that  "even  in  bows  and 
harps  we  loosen  their  strings  that  we  may  bend  and  wind  them 
up  again."  Seneca,  perhaps  the  most  influential  of  Eoman  if 
not  of  European  moralists,  even  recommended  occasional  drunk- 
enness. "Sometimes,"  he  wrote  in  his  De  Tranquillilate,  "we 
ought  to  come  even  to  the  point  of  intoxication,  not  for  the  pur- 
pose of  drowning  ourselves  but  of  sinking  ourselves  deep  in  wine. 
For  it  washes  away  cares  and  raises  our  spirits  from  the  lowest 
depths.  The  inventor  of  wine  is  called  Liber  because  he  frees  the 
soul  from  the  servitude  of  care,  releases  it  from  slavery, 
quickens  it,  and  makes  it  bolder  for  all  undertakings."  The 
Eomans  were  a  sterner  and  more  serious  people  than  the  Greeks, 
but  on  that  very  account  they  recognized  the  necessity  of  occa- 
sionally relaxing  their  moral  fibres  in  order  to  preserve  their  tone, 
and  encouraged  the  prevalence  of  festivals  which  were  marked 
by  much  more  abandonment  than  those  of  Greece.     When  these 


1 A  Meray,  La  Vie  au  Temps  des  Libres  Precheurs,  vol.  ii,  Ch.  X. 
A  good  and  scholarly  account  of  the  Feast  of  Fools  is  given  by  E.  K. 
Chambers,  The  Mediwval  Stage,  Ch.  XIII.  It  is  true  that  the  Church 
and  the  early  Fathers  often  anathematized  the  theatre.  But  Gregory 
of  Nazianzen  wished  to  found  a  Christian  theatre;  the  Mediaeval  Mys- 
teries were  certainly  under  the  protection  of  the  clergy ;  and  St.  Thomas 
Aquinas,  the  greatest  of  the  schoolmen,  only  condemns  the  theatre  with 
cautious  qualifications. 


PROSTITUTION-.  221 

festivals  began  to  k»se  their  moral  sanction  and  to  fall  into  decay 
the  decadence  of  Borne  had  begun. 

All  over  the  world,  and  not  excepting  the  most  primitive 
savages — for  even  savage  life  is  built  up  on  systematic  con- 
straints which  sometimes  need  relaxation — the  principle  of  the 
orgy  is  recognized  and  accepted.  Thus  Spencer  and  Grillen 
describe1  the  JSTathagura  or  fire-ceremony  of  the  Warramunga 
tribe  of  Central  Australia,  a  festival  taken  part  in  by  both  sexes, 
in  which  all  the  ordinary  rules  of  social  life  are  broken,  a  kind 
of  Saturnalia  in  which,  however,  there  is  no  sexual  license,  for 
sexual  license  is,  it  need  scarcely  be  said,  no  essential  part  of  the 
orgy,  even  when  the  orgy  lightens  the  burden  of  sexual  con- 
straints. In  a  widely  different  part  of  the  world,  in  British 
Columbia,  the  Salish  Indians,  according  to  Hill  Tout,2  believed 
that,  long  before  the  whites  came,  their  ancestors  observed  a  Sab- 
bath or  seventh  day  ceremony  for  dancing  and  praying,  assemb- 
ling at  sunrise  and  dancing  till  noon.  The  Sabbath,  or  peri- 
odically recurring  org3^, — not  a  day  of  tension  and  constraint  but 
a  festival  of  joy,  a  rest  from  all  the  duties  of  everyday  life, — 
has,  as  we  know,  formed  an  essential  part  of  many  of  the  orderly 
ancient  civilizations  on  which  our  own  has  been  built;3  it  is 
highly  probable  that  the  stability  of  these  ancient  civilizations 
was  intimately  associated  with  their  recognition  of  the  need  of  a 
Sabbath  orgy.  Such  festivals  are,  indeed,  as  Crawley  observes, 
processes  of  purification  and  reinvigoration,  the  effort  to  put  off 
"the  old  man"  and  put  on  "the  new  man,"  to  enter  with  fresh 
energy  on  the  path  of  everyday  life.4 

1  Spencer  and  Gillen,  'Northern  Tribes  of  Central  Australia,  Ch.  XII. 

2  Journal  Anthropological  Institute,  July-Dee.,   1904,  p.  329. 

3  Westermarck  ( Origin  and  Development  of  the  Moral  Ideas,  vol. 
ii,  pp.  283-9)  shows  how  widespread  is  the  custom  of  setting  apart  a 
periodical  rest  day. 

4  A.  E.  Crawley,  The  Mystic  Rose,  pp.  273  et  seq.,  Crawley  brings 
into  association  with  this  function  of  great  festivals  the  custom,  found 
in  some  parts  of  the  world,  of  exchanging  wives  at  these  times.  "It  has 
nothing  whatever  to  do  with  the  marriage  system,  except  as  breaking  it 
for  a  season,  women  of  forbidden  degree  being  lent,  on  the  same  grounds 
as  conventions  and  ordinary  relations  are  broken  at  festivals  of  the 
Saturnalia  type,  the  object  being  to  change  life  and  start  afresh,  by 
exchanging  everything  one  can,  while  the  very  act  of  exchange  coincides 
with  the  other  desire,  to  weld  the  community  together"  (lb.,  p.  479). 


222  PSYCHOLOGY   OF    SEX. 

The  orgy  is  an  institution  which  by  no  nleans  has  its  signifi- 
cance only  for  the  past.  On  the  contrary,  the  high  tension,  the 
rigid  routine,  the  gray  monotony  of  modern  life  insistently  call 
for  moments  of  organic  relief,  though  the  precise  form  that  that 
orgiastic  relief  takes  must  necessarily  change  with  other  social 
changes.  As  Wilhelm  von  Humboldt  said,  "just  as  men  need 
suffering  in  order  to  become  strong  so  they  need  joy  in  order  to 
become  good/'  Charles  Wagner,  insisting  more  recently  (in  his 
Jeunesse)  on  the  same  need  of  joy  in  our  modern  life,  regrets  that 
dancing  in  the  old,  free,  and  natural  manner  has  gone  out  of 
fashion  or  become  unwholesome.  Dancing  is  indeed  the  most 
fundamental  and  primitive  form  of  the  orgy,  and  that  which  most 
completely  and  healthfully  fulfils  its  object.  For  while  it  is 
undoubtedly,  as  we  see  even  among  animals,  a  process  by  which 
sexual  tumescence  is  accomplished,1  it  by  no  means  necessarily 
becomes  focussed  in  sexual  detumescence  but  it  may  itself  become 
a  detumescent  discharge  of  accumulated  energy.  It  was  on  this 
account  that,  at  all  events  in  former  days,  the  clergy  in  Spain,  on 
moral  grounds,  openly  encouraged  the  national  passion  for 
dancing.  Among  cultured  people  in  modern  times,  the  orgy 
tends  to  take  on  a  purely  cerebral  form,  which  is  less  wholesome 
because  it  fails  to  lead  to  harmonious  discharge  along  motor 
channels.  In  these  comparatively  passive  forms,  however,  the 
orgy  tends  to  become  more  and  more  pronounced  under  the  con- 
ditions of  civilization.  Aristotle's  famous  statement  concerning 
the  function  of  tragedy  as  "purgation"  seems  to  be  a  recognition 
of  the  beneficial  effects  of  the  orgy.2  Wagner's  music-dramas 
appeal  powerfully  to  this  need;  the  theatre,  now  as  ever,  fulfils 
a  great  function  of  the  same  kind,  inherited  from  the  ancient 
days  when  it  was  the  ordered  expression  of  a  sexual  festival,3 


1  See  "The  Analysis  of  the  Sexual  Impulse"  in  vol.  iii  of  these 
Studies. 

2  G.  Murray,  Ancient  Greek  Literature,  p.  211. 

3  The  Greek  drama  probably  arose  out  of  a  folk-festival  of  more  or 
less  sexual  character,  and  it  is  even  possible  that  the  mediaeval  drama 
had  a  somewhat  similar  origin  (see  Donaldson,  The  Greek  Theatre;  Gil- 
bert Murrav,  loo.  cit.;  Karl  Pearson,  The  Chances  of  Death,  vol.  ii,  pp. 
135-6,  280  et  seq.). 


PROSTITUTION.  223 

The  theatre,  indeed,  tends  at  the  present  time  to  assume  a  larger 
importance  and  to  approximate  to  the  more  serious  dramatic  per- 
formances of  classic  days  by  being  transferred  to  the  day-time 
and  the  open-air.  France  has  especially  taken  the  initiative  in 
these  performances,  analogous  to  the  Dionysiac  festivals  of 
antiquity  and  the  Mysteries  and  Moralities  of  the  Middle  Ages. 
The  movement  began  some  years  ago  at  Orange.  In  1907  there 
were,  in  France,  as  many  as  thirty  open-air  theatres  (Theatres  de 
la  Nature,"  "Theatres  du  Soleil,"  etc.,)  while  it  is  in  Marseilles 
that  the  first  formal  open-air  theatre  has  been  erected  since  classic 
days.1  In  England,  likewise,  there  has  been  a  great  extension  of 
popular  interest  in  dramatic  performances,  and  the  newly  insti- 
tuted Pageants,  carried  out  and  taken  part  in  by  the  population 
of  the  region  commemorated  in  the  Pageant,  are  festivals  of  the 
same  character.  In  England,  however,  at  the  present  time,  the 
real  popular  orgiastic  festivals  are  the  Bank  holidays,  with  which 
may  be  associated  the  more  occasional  celebrations,  "Maffekings," 
etc.,  often  called  out  by  comparatively  insignificant  national 
events  but  still  adequate  to  arouse  orgiastic  emotions  as  genuine 
as  those  of  antiquity,  though  they  are  lacking  in  beauty  and 
religious  consecration.  It  is  easy  indeed  for  the  narrowly  austere 
person  to  view  such  manifestations  with  a  supercilious  smile,  but 
in  the  eyes  of  the  moralist  and  the  philosopher  these  orgiastic 
festivals  exert  a  salutary  and  preservative  function.  In  every 
age  of  dull  and  monotonous  routine — and  all  civilization  involves 
such  routine — many  natural  impulses  and  functions  tend  to 
become  suppressed,  atrophied,  or  perverted.  They  need  these 
moments  of  joyous  exercise  and  expression,  moments  in  which 
they  may  not  necessarily  attain  their  full  activity  but  in  which 
they  will  at  all  events  be  able,  as  Cyples  expresses  it,  to  rehearse 
their  great  possibilities.2 


i  R.  Canudo,  "Les  Choreges  Frangais,"  Mercure  de  France,  May  1, 
1907,  p.  180. 

2  "This  is,  in  fact,"  Cyples  declares  ( The  Process  of  Human 
Experience,  p.  743 ) ,  "Art's  great  function — to  rehearse  within  us  greater 
egoistic  possibilities,  to  habituate  us  to  larger  actualizations  of  personal- 
ity in  a  rudimentary  manner,"  and  so  to  arouse,  "aimlessly  but  splen- 
didly, the  sheer  aa  yet  unfulfilled  possibilities  within  us." 


224  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 


II.    The  Origin  and  Development  of  Prostitution. 

The  more  refined  forms  of  the  orgy  flourish  in  civilization, 
although  on  account  of  their  mainly  cerebral  character  they  are 
not  the  most  beneficent  or  the  most  effective.  The  more 
primitive  and  muscular  forms  of  the  orgy  tend,  on  the  other 
hand,  under  the  influence  of  civilization,  to  fall  into  discredit 
and  to  be  so  far  as  possible  suppressed  altogether.  It  is  partly 
in  this  way  that  civilization  encourages  prostitution.  For  the 
orgy  in  its  primitive  forms,  forbidden  to  show  itself  openly  and 
reputably,  seeks  the  darkness,  and  allying  itself  with  a  funda- 
mental instinct  to  which  civilized  society  offers  no  complete 
legitimate  satisfaction,  it  firmly  entrenches  itself  in  the  very 
centre  of  civilized  life,  and  thereby  constitutes  a  problem  of 
immense  difficulty  and  importance.1 

It  is  commonly  said  that  prostitution  has  existed  always  and 
everywhere.  That  statement  is  far  from  correct.  A  kind  of 
amateur  prostitution  is  occasionally  found  among  savages,  but 
usually  it  is  only  when  barbarism  is  fully  developed  and  is  already 
approaching  the  stage  of  civilization  that  well  developed  prosti- 
tution is  found.  It  exists  in  a  systematic  form  in  every  civiliza- 
tion. 

What  is  prostitution  ?  There  has  been  considerable  discus- 
sion as  to  the  correct  definition  of  prostitution.2  The  Eoman 
Ulpian  said  that  a  prostitute  was  one  who  openly  abandons  her 
body  to  a  number  of  men  without  choice,  for  money.3  Not  all 
modern  definitions  have  been  so  satisfactory.  It  is  sometimes 
said  a  prostitute  is  a  woman  who  gives  herself  to  numerous  men. 
To  be  sound,  however,  a  definition  must  be  applicable  to  both 


i  Even  when  monotonous  labor  is  intellectual,  it  is  not  thereby  pro- 
tected against  degrading  orgiastic  reactions.  Prof.  L.  Gurlitt  shows 
(Die  Neue  Generation,  January,  1909,  pp.  31-6)  how  the  strenuous, 
unremitting  intellectual  work  of  Prussian  seminaries  leads  among  both 
teachers  and  scholars  to  the  worst  forms  of  the  orgy. 

2Eabutaux  discusses  various  definitions  of  prostitution,  De  la 
Prostitution  en  Europe,  pp.  119  et  seq.  For  the  origin  of  the  names  to 
designate  the  prostitute,  see  Schrader,  Reallexicon,  art.  "Beischlaferin." 

3  Digest,  lib.  xxiii,  tit.  ii,  p.  43.  If  she  only  gave  herself  to  one  or 
two  persons,  though  for  money,  it  was  not  prostitution. 


PROSTITUTION".  225 

sexes  alike  and  we  should  certainly  hesitate  to  describe  a  man  who 
had  sexual  intercourse  with  many  women  as  a  prostitute.  The 
idea  of  venality,  the  intention  to  sell  the  favors  of  the  body,  is 
essential  to  the  conception  of  prostitution.  Thus  Guyot  defines 
a  prostitute  as  "any  person  for  whom  sexual  relationships  are 
subordinated  to  gain/'1  It  is  not,  however,  adequate  to  define  a 
prostitute  simply  as  a  woman  who  sells  her  body.  That  is  done 
every  day  by  women  who  become  wives  in  order  to  gain  a  home 
and  a  livelihood,  yet,  immoral  as  this  conduct  may  be  from  any 
high  ethical  standpoint,  it  would  be  inconvenient  and  even  mis- 
leading to  call  it  prostitution.2  It  is  better,  therefore,  to  define 
a  prostitute  as  a  woman  who  temporarily  sells  her  sexual  favors 
to  various  persons.  Thus,  according  to  Wharton's  Law-lexicon 
a  prostitute  is  "a  woman  who  indiscriminately  consorts  with  men 
for  hire";  Bonger  states  that  "those  women  are  prostitutes  who 
sell  their  bodies  for  the  exercise  of  sexual  acts  and  make  of  this  a 
profession";3  Eichard  again  states  that  "a  prostitute  is  a  woman 
who  publicly  gives  herself  to  the  first  comer  in  return  for  a 
pecuniary  remuneration."4  As,  finally,  the  prevalence  of  homo- 
sexuality has  led  to  the  existence  of  male  prostitutes,  the  defini- 
tion must  be  put  in  a  form  irrespective  of  sex,  and  we  may,  there- 
fore, say  that  a  prostitute  is  a  person  who  makes  it  a  profession 


1  Guyot,  La  Prostitution,  p.  8.  The  element  of  venality  is  essential, 
and  religious  writers  (like  Robert  WardlaAV,  D.D.,  of  Edinburgh,  in  his 
Lectures  on  Female  Prostitution,  1842,  p.  14)  who  define  prostitution  as 
"the  illicit  intercourse  of  the  sexes,"  and  synonymous  with  theological 
"fornication,"  fall  into  an  absurd  confusion. 

2  "Such  marriages  are  sometimes  stigmatized  as  'legalized  prosti- 
tution,' "  remarks  Sidgwick  ( Methods  of  Ethics,  Bk.  iii,  Ch.  XI ) ,  "but 
the  phrase  is  felt  to  be  extravagant  and  paradoxical." 

3  Bonger,  Criminalite  et  Conditions  Economiques,  p.  378.  Bon- 
ger believes  that  the  act  of  prostitution  is  "intrinsically  equal  to  that 
of  a  man  or  woman  who  contracts  a  marriage  for  economical  reasons." 

4E.  Richard,  La  Prostitution  a  Paris,  1890,  p.  44.  It  may  be  ques- 
tioned whether  publicity  or  notoriety  should  form  an  essential  part  of 
the  definition ;  it  seems,  however,  to  be  involved,  or  the  prostitute  can- 
not obtain  clients.  Reuss  states  that  she  must,  in  addition,  be  absolutely 
without  means  of  subsistence;  that  is  certainly  not  essential.  Nor  is 
it  necessary,  as  the  Digest  insisted,  that  the  act  should  be  performed 
"without  pleasure;"  that  may  be  as  it  will,  without  affecting  the 
prostitutional  nature  of  the  act. 


226  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   SES. 

to  gratify  the  lust  of  various  persons  of  the  opposite  sex  or  the 
same  sex. 

It  is  essential  that  the  act  of  prostitution  should  be  habitually  per- 
formed with  "various  persons."  A  woman  who  gains  her  living  by  being 
mistress  to  a  man,  to  whom  she  is  faithful,  is  not  a  prostitute,  although 
she  often  becomes  one  afterwards,  and  may  have  been  one  before.  The 
exact  point  at  which  a  woman  begins  to  be  a  prostitute  is  a  question  of 
considerable  importance  in  countries  in  which  prostitutes  are  subject  to 
registration.  Thus  in  Berlin,  not  long  ago,  a  girl  who  was  mistress  to 
a  rich  cavalry  officer  and  supported  by  him,  during  the  illness  of  the 
officer  accidentally  met  a  man  whom  she  had  formerly  known,  and  once 
or  twice  invited  him  to  see  her,  receiving  from  him  presents  in  money. 
This  somehow  came  to  the  knowledge  of  the  police,  and  she  was  arrested 
and  sentenced  to  one  day's  imprisonment  as  an  unregistered  prostitute. 
On  appeal,  however,  the  sentence  was  annulled.  Liszt,  in  his  Strafrecht, 
lays  it  down  that  a  girl  who  obtains  whole  or  part  of  her  income  from 
"fixed  relationships"  is  not  practicing  unchastity  for  gain  in  the  sense 
of  the  German  law  (Geschlecht  und  Oesellschaft,  Jahrgang  1,  Heft  9,  p. 
345). 

It  is  not  altogether  easy  to  explain  the  origin  of  the  system- 
atized professional  prostitution  with  the  existence  of  which  we 
are  familiar  in  civilization.  The  amateur  kind  of  prostitution 
which  has  sometimes  been  noted  among  primitive  peoples — the 
fact,  that  is,  that  a  man  may  give  a  woman  a  present  in  seeking 
to  persuade  her  to  allow  him  to  have  intercourse  with  her — is 
really  not  prostitution  as  we  understand  it.  The  present  in  such 
a  case  is  merely  part  of  a  kind  of  courtship  leading  to  a  temporary 
relationship.  The  woman  more  or  less  retains  her  social  position 
and  is  not  forced  to  make  an  avocation  of  selling  herself  because 
henceforth  no  other  career  is  possible  to  her.  When  Cook  came 
to  New  Zealand  his  men  found  that  the  women  were  not  impreg- 
nable, "but  the  terms  and  manner  of  compliance  were  as  decent 
as  those  in  marriage  among  us,"  and  according  "to  their  notions 
the  agreement  was  as  innocent."  The  consent  of  the  woman's 
friends  was  necessary,  and  when  the  preliminaries  were  settled 
it  was  also  necessary  to  treat  this  "Juliet  of  a  night"  with  "the 
same  delicacy  as  is  here  required  with  the  wife  for  life,  and  the 
lover  who  presumed  to  take  any  liberties  by  which  this  was 


PROSTITUTION.  227 

violated  was  sure  to  be  disappointed."1  In  some  of  the  Melan- 
esian  Islands,  it  is  said  that  women  would  sometimes  become 
prostitutes,  or  on  account  of  their  bad  conduct  be  forced  to 
become  prostitutes  for  a  time;  they  were  not,  however,  par- 
ticularly despised,  and  when  they  had  in  this  way  accumulated  a 
certain  amount  of  property  they  could  marry  well,  after  which  it 
would  not  be  proper  to  refer  to  their  former  career.2 

When  prostitution  first  arises  among  a  primitive  people  it 
sometimes  happens  that  little  or  no  stigma  is  attached  to  it  for 
the  reason  that  the  community  has  not  yet  become  accustomed  to 
attach  any  special  value  to  the  presence  of  virginity.  Schurtz 
quotes  from  the  old  Arabic  geographer  Al-Bekri  some  interesting 
remarks  about  the  Slavs :  "The  women  of  the  Slavs,  after  they 
have  married,  are  faithful  to  their  husbands.  If,  however,  a 
young  girl  falls  in  love  with  a  man  she  goes  to  him  and  satisfies 
her  passion.  And  if  a  man  marries  and  finds  his  wife  a  virgin 
he  says  to  her:  'If  you  were  worth  anything  men  would  have 
loved  you,  and  you  would  have  chosen  one  who  would  have  taken 
away  your  virginity/  Then  he  drives  her  away  and  renounces 
her."  It  is  a  feeling  of  this  kind  which,  among  some  peoples, 
leads  a  girl  to  be  proud  of  the  presents  she  has  received  from  her 
lovers  and  to  preserve  them  as  a  dowry  for  her  marriage,  knowing 
that  her  value  will  thus  be  still  further  heightened.  Even  among 
the  Southern  Slavs  of  modern  Europe,  who  have  preserved  much 
of  the  primitive  sexual  freedom,  this  freedom,  as  Krauss,  who  has 
minutely  studied  the  manners  and  customs  of  these  peoples, 
declares,  is  fundamentally  different  from  vice,  licentiousness,  or 
immodesty.3 

Prostitution  tends  to  arise,  as  Schurtz  has  pointed  out,  in 
every  society  in  which  early  marriage  is  difficult  and  intercourse 
outside  marriage  is  socially  disapproved.  "Venal  women  every- 
where appear  as  soon  as  the  free  sexual  intercourse  of  young 
people  is  repressed,  without  the  necessary  consequences  being 


1  Hawkesworth,  Account  of  the  Voyages,  etc.,  1775,  vol.  ii,  p.  254. 

2  R.  W.  Codrington,  The  Melanesians,  p.  235. 

s  F.  S.  Krauss,  Romanische  Forschungen,  1903,  p.  290. 


228  PSYCHOLOGY   OF    SEX. 

impeded  by  unusually  early  marriages/'1  The  repression  of 
sexual  intimacies  outside  marriage  is  a  phenomenon  of  civiliza- 
tion, but  it  is  not  itself  by  any  means  a  measure  of  a  people's 
general  level,  and  may,  therefore,  begin  to  appear  at  an  earl3r 
period.  But  it  is  important  to  remember  that  the  primitive  and 
rudimentary  forms  of  prostitution,  when  they  occur,  are  merely 
temporary,  and  frequently — though  not  invariably — involve  no 
degrading  influence  on  the  woman  in  public  estimation,  some- 
times indeed  increasing  her  value  as  a  wife.  The  woman  who 
sells  herself  for  money  purely  as  a  professional  matter,  without 
any  thought  of  love  or  passion,  and  who,  by  virtue  of  her  pro- 
fession, belongs  to  a  pariah  class  definitely  and  rigidly  excluded 
from  the  main  body  of  her  sex,  is  a  phenomenon  which  can 
seldom  be  found  except  in  developed  civilization.  It  is  alto- 
gether incorrect  to  speak  of  prostitutes  as  a  mere  survival  from 
primitive  times. 

On  the  whole,  while  among  savages  sexual  relationships  are 
sometimes  free  before  marriage,  as  well  as  on  the  occasion  of 
special  festivals,  they  are  rarely  truly  promiscuous  and  still  more 
rarely  venal.  When  savage  women  nowadays  sell  themselves,  or 
are  sold  by  their  husbands,  it  has  usually  been  found  that  we  are 
concerned  with  the  contamination  of  European  civilization. 

The  definite  ways  in  which  professional  prostitution  may 
arise  are  no  doubt  many.2  We  may  assent  to  the  general  principle, 
laid  down  by  Schurtz,  that  whenever  the  free  union  of  young 
people  is  impeded  under  conditions  in  which  early  marriage  is 
also  difficult  prostitution  must  certainly  arise.  There  are,  how- 
ever, different  ways  in  which  this  principle  may  take  shape.  ■  So 
far  as  our  western  civilization  is  concerned — the  civilization,  that 


1 H.  Schurtz,  Altersklassen  und  Manneroiinde,  1902,  p.  190.  In 
this  work  Schurtz  brings  together  (pp.  189-201)  some  examples  of  the 
germs  of  prostitution  among  primitive  peoples.  Many  facts  and  refer- 
ences are  given  by  Westermarck  {History  of  Human  Marriage,  pp.  66 
et  seq.,  and  Origin  and  Development  of  the  Moral  Ideas,  vol.  ii,  pp.  441 
et  seq. ) . 

2  Bachofen  (more  especially  in  his  Mutterrecht  and  Sage  von 
Tanaquil)  argued  that  even  religious  prostitution  sprang  from  the 
resistance  of  primitive  instincts  to  the  individualization  of  love.  Cf. 
Robertson  Smith,  Religion  of  Semites,  second  edition,  p.  59. 


PROSTITUTION.  229 

is  to  say,  which  has  its  cradle  in  the  Mediterranean  basin — it 
would  seem  that  the  origin  of  prostitution  is  to  be  found  pri- 
marily in  a  religious  custom,  religion,  the  great  conserver  of 
social  traditions,  preserving  in  a  transformed  shape  a  primitive 
freedom  that  was  passing  out  of  general  social  life.1  The  typical 
example  is  that  recorded  by  Herodotus,  in  the  fifth  century 
before  Christ,  at  the  temple  of  Mylitta,.the  Babylonian  Venus, 
where  every  woman  once  in  her  life  had  to  come  and  give  herself 
to  the  first  stranger  who  threw  a  coin  in  her  lap,  in  worship  of 
the  goddess.  The  money  could  not  be  refused,  however  small  the 
amount,  but  it  was  given  as  an  offertory  to  the  temple,  and  the 
woman,  having  followed  the  man  and  thus  made  oblation  to 
Mylitta,  returned  home  and  lived  chastely  ever  afterwards.2  Very 
similar  customs  existed  in  other  parts  of  Western  Asia,  in  North 
Africa,  in  Cyprus  and  other  islands  of  the  Eastern  Mediterranean, 
and  also  in  Greece,  where  the  Temple  of  Aphrodite  on  the  fort  at 
Corinth  possessed  over  a  thousand  hierodules,  dedicated  to  the 
service  of  the  goddess,  from  time  to  time,  as  Strabo  states,  by 
those  who  desired  to  make  thank-offering  for  mercies  vouchsafed 
to  them.  Pindar  refers  to  the  hospitable  young  Corinthian 
women  ministrants  whose  thoughts  often  turn  towards  Ourania 


1  Whatever  the  reason  may  be,  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  there  is 
a  widespread  tendency  for  religion  and  prostitution  to  be  associated;  it 
is  possibly  to  some  extent  a  special  case  of  that  general  connection 
between  the  religious  and  sexual  impulses  which  has  been  discussed  else- 
where (Appendix  C  to  vol.  i  of  these  Studies).  Thus  A.  B.  Ellis,  in  his 
book  on  The  Ewe-speaking  Peoples  of  West  Africa  (pp.  124,  141)  states 
that  here  women  dedicated  to  a  god  become  promiscuous  prostitutes. 
W.  G.  Sumner  (Folkways,  Ch.  XVI)  brings  together  many  facts  concern- 
ing the  wide  distribution  of  religious  prostitution. 

2  Herodotus,  Bk.  I,  Ch.  CXCIX;  Baruch,  Ch.  VI,  p.  43.  Modern 
scholars  confirm  the  statements  of  Herodotus  from  the  study  of  Babylon- 
ian literature,  though  inclined  to  deny  that  religious  prostitution 
occupied  so  large  a  place  as  he  gives  it.  A  tablet  of  the  Gilgamash  epic, 
according  to  Morris  Jastrow.  refers  to  prostitutes  as  attendants  of  the 
goddess  Ishtar  in  the  city  Uruk  (or  Erech) ,  which  was  thus  a  centre,  and 
perhaps  the  chief  centre,  of  the  rites  described  by  Herodotus  (Morris 
Jastrow,  The  Religion  of  Babylonia  and  Assyria,  1898,  p.  475).  Ishtar 
was  the  goddess  of  fertility,  the  great  mother  goddess,  and  the  prostitutes 
were  priestesses,  attached  to  her  worship,  who  took  part  in  ceremonies 
intended  to  symbolize  fertility.  These  priestesses  of  Ishtar  were  known 
by  the  general  name  Kadishtu,  "the  holy  ones"  (op.  cit.,  pp.  485.  660). 


230  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   SEX. 

Aphrodite1  in  whose  temple  they  burned  incense;  and  Athenaeus 
mentions  the  importance  that  was  attached  to  the  prayers  of  the 
Corinthian  prostitutes  in  any  national  calamity.2 

We  seem  here  to  be  in  the  presence,  not  merely  of  a  relig- 
iously preserved  survival  of  a  greater  sexual  freedom  formerly 
existing,3  but  of  a  specialized  and  ritualized  development  of  that 
primitive  cult  of  the  generative  forces  of  Nature  which  involves 
the  belief  that  all  natural  fruitfulness  is  associated  with,  and 
promoted  by,  acts  of  human  sexual  intercourse  which  thus 
acquire  a  religious  significance.  At  a  later  stage  acts  of  sexual 
intercourse  having  a  religious  significance  become  specialized  and 
localized  in  temples,  and  by  a  rational  transition  of  ideas  it 
becomes  believed  that  such  acts  of  sexual  intercourse  in  the  serv- 
ice of  the  god,  or  with  persons  devoted  to  the  god's  service, 
brought  benefits  to  the  individual  who  performed  them,  more 
especially,  if  a  woman,  by  insuring  her  fertility.  Among  primi- 
tive peoples  generally  this  conception  is  embodied  mainly  in 
seasonal  festivals,  but  among  the  peoples  of  Western  Asia  who  had 
ceased  to  be  primitive,  and  among  whom  traditional  priestly  and 
hieratic  influences  had  acquired  very  great  influence,  the  earlier 


1  It  is  usual  among  modern  writers  to  associate  Aphrodite  Pan- 
demos,  rather  than  Ourania,  with  venal  or  promiscuous  sexuality,  but 
this  is  a  complete  mistake,  for  the  Aphrodite  Pandemos  was  purely  polit- 
ical and  had  no  sexual  significance.  The  mistake  was  introduced,  per- 
haps intentionally,  by  Plato.  It  has  been  suggested  that  that  arch-jug- 
gler, who  disliked  democratic  ideas,  purposely  sought  to  pervert  and 
vulgarize  the  conception  of  Aphrodite  Pandemos  ( Farnell,  Cults  of  Greek 
States,  vol.  ii,  p.  660). 

2  Athenaeus,  Bk.  xiii,  cap.  XXXII.  It  appears  that  the  only  other 
Hellenic  community  where  the  temple  cult  involved  unchastity  was  a 
city  of  the  Locri  Epizephyrii  (Farnell,  op.  cit.,  vol.  ii,  p.  636). 

3  I  do  not  say  an  earlier  "promiscuity,"  for  the  theory  of  a  primi- 
tive sexual  promiscuity  is  now  widely  discredited,  though  there  can  be 
no  reasonable  doubt  that  the  early  prevalence  of  mother-right  was  more 
favorable  to  the  sexual  freedom  of  women  than  the  later  patriarchal 
system.  Thus  in  very  early  Egyptian  days  a  woman  could  give  her 
favors  to  any  man  she  chose  by  sending  him  her  garment,  even  if  she 
were  married.  In  time  the  growth  of  the  rights  of  men  led  to  this  being 
regarded  as  criminal,  but  the  priestesses  of  Amen  retained  the  privilege 
to  the  last,  as  being  under  divine  protection  ( Flinders  Petrie,  Egyptian 
Tales,  pp.  10,  48). 


PROSTITUTION.  231 

generative  cult  had  thus, 'it  seems  probable,  naturally  changed 
its  form  in  becoming  attached  to  the  temples.1 

The  theory  that  religious  prostitution  developed,  as  a  general  rule, 
out  of  the  belief  that  the  generative  activity  of  human  beings  possessed 
a  mysterious  and  sacred  influence  in  promoting  the  fertility  of  Nature 
generally  seems  to  have  been  first  set  forth  by  Mannhardt  in  his  Antike 
Wald-  und  Feldkulte  (pp.  283  et  seq.).  It  is  supported  by  Dr.  F.  S. 
Krauss  ("Beischlafausiibung  als  Kulthandlung,"  Anthropophyteia,  vol. 
iii,  p.  20 ) ,  who  refers  to  the  significant  fact  that  in  Baruch's  time,  at  a 
period  long  anterior  to  Herodotus,  sacred  prostitution  took  place  under 
the  trees.  Dr.  J.  G.  Frazer  has  more  especially  developed  this  concep- 
tion of  the  origin  of  sacred  prostitution  in  his  Adonis,  Attis,  Osiris.  He 
thus  summarizes  his  lengthy  discussion :  "We  may  conclude  that  a  great 
Mother  Goddess,  the  personification  of  all  the  reproductive  energies  of 
nature,  was  worshipped  under  different  names,  but  with  a  substantial 
similarity  of  myth  and  ritual  by  many  peoples  of  western  Asia;  that 
associated  with  her  was  a  lover,  or  rather  series  of  lovers,  divine  yet 
mortal,  with  whom  she  mated  year  by  year,  their  commerce  being  deemed 
essential  to  the  propagation  of  animals  and  plants,  each  in  their  several 
kind;  and  further,  that  the  fabulous  union  of  the  divine  pair  was  sim- 
ulated, and,  as  it  were,  multiplied  on  earth  by  the  real,  though  tem- 
porary, union  of  the  human  sexes  at  the  sanctuary  of  the  goddess  for 
the  sake  of  thereby  ensuring  the  fruitfulness  of  the  ground  and  the 
increase  of  man  and  beast.  In  course  of  time,  as  the  institution  of 
individual  marriage  grew  in  favor,  and  the  old  communism  fell  more  and 
more  into  discredit,  the  revival  of  the  ancient  practice,  even  for  a  single 
occasion  in  a  woman's  life,  became  ever  more  repugnant  to  the  moral 
sense  of  the  people,  and  accordingly  they  resorted  to  various  expedients 
for  evading  in  practice  the  obligation  which  they  still  acknowledged  in 
theory.  ....  But  while  the  majority  of  women  thus  contrived  to 
observe  the  form  of  religion  without  sacrificing  their  virtue,  it  was  still 
thought  necessary  to  the  general  welfare  that  a  certain  number  of  them 
should  discharge  the  old  obligation  in  the  old  way.  These  became 
prostitutes,  either  for  life  or  for  a  term  of  years,  at  one  of  the  temples: 
dedicated  to  the  service  of  religion,  they  were  invested  with  a  sacred 

1  It  should  be  added  that  Farnell  ( "The  Position  of  Women  in 
Ancient  Religion,"  Archiv  fur  ReligionswissenscJiaft,  1904,  p.  88)  seeks 
to  explain  the  religious  prostitution  of  Babylonia  as  a  special  religious 
modification  of  the  custom  of  destroying  virginity  before  marriage  in 
order  to  safeguard  the  husband  from  the  mvstic  dangers  of  defloration. 
E.  S.  Hartland,  also  ("Concerning  the  Bite 'at  the  Temple  of  Mylitta," 
Anthropological  Essays  Presented  to  E.  B.  Tyler,  p.  189),  suggests  that 
this  was  a  puberty  rite  connected  with  ceremonial  defloration.  This 
theory  is  not,  however,  generally  accepted  by  Semitic  scholars. 


232  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   SEX. 

character,  and  their  vocation,  far  from  being  deemed  infamous,  was 
probably  long  regarded  by  the  laity  as  an  exercise  of  more  than  common 
virtue,  and  rewarded  with  a  tribute  of  mixed  wonder,  reverence,  and 
pity,  not  unlike  that  which  in  some  parts  of  the  world  is  still  paid  to 
women  who  seek  to  honor  their  Creator  in  a  different  way  by  renouncing 
the  natural  functions  of  their  sex  and  the  tenderest  relations  of  human- 
ity" (J.  G.  Frazer,  Adonis,  Attis,  Osiris,  1907,  pp.  23  et  seq.) . 

It  is  difficult  to  resist  the  conclusion  that  this  theory  represents 
the  central  and  primitive  idea  which  led  to  the  development  of  sacred 
prostitution.  It  seems  equally  clear,  however,  that  as  time  went  on,  and 
especially  as  temple  cults  developed  and  priestly  influence  increased,  this 
fundamental  and  primitive  idea  tended  to  become  modified,  and  even 
transformed.  The  primitive  conception  became  specialized  in  the  belief 
that  religious  benefits,  and  especially  the  gift  of  fruitfulness,  were 
gained  by  the  worshipper,  who  thus  sought  the  goddess's  favor  by  an 
act  of  unchastity  which  might  be  presumed  to  be  agreeable  to  an 
unchaste  deity.  The  rite  of  Mylitta,  as  described  by  Herodotus,  was  a 
late  development  of  this  kind  in  an  ancient  civilization,  and  the  benefit 
sought  was  evidently  for  the  worshipper  herself.  This  has  been  pointed 
out  by  Dr.  Westermarck,  who  remarks  that  the  words  spoken  to  the 
woman  by  her  partner  as  he  gives  her  the  coin — "May  the  goddess  be 
auspicious  to  thee!" — themselves  indicate  that  the  object  of  the  act  was 
to  insure  her  fertility,  and  he  refers  also  to  the  fact  that  strangers  fre- 
quently had  a  semi-supernatural  character,  and  their  benefits  a  specially 
efficacious  character  (Westermarck,  Origin  and  Development  of  the  Moral 
Ideas,  vol.  ii,  p.  446 ) .  It  may  be  added  that  the  rite  of  Mylitta  thus 
became  analogous  with  another  Mediterranean  rite,  in  which  the  act 
of  simulating  intercourse  with  the  representative  of  a  god,  or  his  image, 
ensured  a  woman's  fertility.  This  is  the  rite  practiced  by  the  Egyptians 
of  Mendes,  in  which  a  woman  went  through  the  ceremony  of  simulated 
intercourse  with  the  sacred  goat,  regarded  as  the  representative  of  a 
deity  of  Pan-like  character  (Herodotus,  Bk.  ii,  Ch.  XL VI;  and  see 
Dulaure,  Des  Divinites  Generatrices,  Ch.  II;  cf.  vol.  v  of  these  Studies, 
"Erotic  Symbolism,"  Sect.  IV).  This  rite  was  maintained  by  Roman 
women,  in  connection  with  the  statues  of  Priapus,  to  a  very  much  later 
date,  and  St.  Augustine  mentions  how  Roman  matrons  placed  the  young 
bride  on  the  erect  member  of  Priapus  ( De  Civitate  Dei,  Bk.  iii,  Ch.  IX ) . 
The  idea  evidently  running  through  this  whole  group  of  phenomena  is 
that  the  deity,  or  the  representative  or  even  mere  image  of  the  deity, 
is  able,  through  a  real  or  simulated  act  of  intercourse,  to  confer  on  the 
worshipper  a  portion  of  its  own  exalted  generative  activity. 

At  a  later  period,  in  Corinth,  prostitutes  were  still  the 
priestesses    of   Venus,   more    or   less   loosely    attached   to   her 


PROSTITUTION.  233 

temples,  and  so  long  as  that  was  the  case  they  enjoyed  a  con- 
siderable degree  of  esteem.  At  this  stage,  however,  we  realize 
that  religious  prostitution  was  developing  a  utilitarian  side. 
These  temples  flourished  chiefly  in  sea-coast  towns,  in  islands,  in 
large  cities  to  which  many  strangers  and  sailors  came.  The 
priestesses  of  Cyprus  burnt  incense  on  her  altars  and  invoked  her 
sacred  aid,  but  at  the  same  time  Pindar  addresses  them  as  "young 
girls  who  welcome  all  strangers  and  give  them  hospitality/' 
Side  by  side  with  the  religious  significance  of  the  act  of  genera- 
tion the  needs  of  men  far  from  home  were  already  beginning  to  be 
definitely  recognized.  The  Babylonian  woman  had  gone  to  the 
temple  of  Mylitta  to  fulfil  a  personal  religious  duty;  the  Corin- 
thian priestess  had  begun  to  act  as  an  avowed  minister  to  the 
sexual  needs  of  men  in  strange  cities. 

The  custom  which  Herodotus  noted  in  Lydia  of  young  girls 
prostituting  themselves  in  order  to  acquire  a  marriage  portion 
which  they  may  dispose  of  as  they  think  fit  (Bk.  1,  Ch.  93)  may 
very  well  have  developed  (as  Frazer  also  believes)  out  of  religious 
prostitution;  we  can  indeed  trace  its  evolution  in  Cyprus  where 
eventually,  at  the  period  when  Justinian  visited  the  island,  the 
money  given  by  strangers  to  the  women  was  no  longer  placed  on 
the  altar  but  put  into  a  chest  to  form  marriage-portions  for 
them.  It  is  a  custom  to  be  found  in  Japan  and  various  other 
parts  of  the  world,  notably  among  the  Ouled-Nail  of  Algeria,1 
and  is  not  necessarily  always  based  on  religious  prostitution; 
but  it  obviously  cannot  exist  except  among  peoples  who  see  noth- 
ing very  derogatory  in  free  sexual  intercourse  for  the  purpose  of 
obtaining  money,  so  that  the  custom  of  Mylitta  furnished  a 
natural  basis  for  it.2 


i  The  girls  of  this  tribe,  who  are  remarkably  pretty,  after  spending 
two  or  three_  years  in  thus  amassing  a  little  dowry,  return  home  to  marry, 
and  are  said  to  make  model  wives  and  mothers.  They  are  described  by 
Bertherand  in  Parent-Duchatelet,  La  Prostitution  a  Paris,  vol.  ii,  p.  539. 

2  In  Abyssinia  (according  to  Fiaschi,  British  Medical  Journal, 
March  13,  1897),  where  prostitution  has  always  been  held  in  high  esteem, 
the  prostitutes,  who  are  now  subject  to  medical  examination  twice  a 
week,  still  attach  no  disgrace  to  their  profession,  and  easily  find  hus- 
bands afterwards.  Potter  (Sohrab  and  Rustem,  pp.  168  et  seq.)  gives 
references  as  regards  peoples,  widely  dispersed  in  the  Old  World  and  the 
New,  among  whom  the  young  women  have  practiced  prostitution  to 
obtain  a  dowry. 


234  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

As  a  more  spiritual  conception  of  religion  developed,  and 
as  the  growth  of  civilization  tended  to  deprive  sexual  intercourse 
of  its  sacred  halo,  religious  prostitution  in  Greece  was  slowly 
abolished,  though  on  the  coasts  of  Asia  Minor  both  religious, 
prostitution  and  prostitution  for  the  purpose  of  obtaining  a 
marriage  portion  persisted  to  the  time  of  Constantine,  who  put  an 
end  to  these  ancient  customs.1  Superstition  was  on  the  side  of 
the  old  religious  prostitution;  it  was  believed  that  women  who 
had  never  sacrificed  to  Aphrodite  became  consumed  by  lust,  and 
according  to  the  legend  recorded  by  Ovid — a  legend  which  seems 
to  point  to  a  certain  antagonism  between  sacred  and  secular  pros- 
titution— this  was  the  case  with  the  women  who  first  became 
public  prostitutes.  The  decay  of  religious  prostitution,  doubtless 
combined  with  the  cravings  always  born  of  the  growth  of  civiliza- 
tion, led  up  to  the  first  establishment,  attributed  by  legend  to 
Solon,  of  a  public  brothel,  a  purely  secular  establishment  for  a 
purely  secular  end :  the  safeguarding  of  the  virtue  of  the  general 
population  and  the  increase  of  the  public  revenue.  With  that 
institution  the  evolution  of  prostitution,  and  of  the  modern 
marriage  system  of  which  it  forms  part,  was  completed.  The 
Athenian  dikterion  is  the  modern  brothel;  the  dikteriade  is  the 
modern  state-regulated  prostitute.  The  free  hetairce,  indeed, 
subsequently  arose,  educated  women  having  no  taint  of  the  dik- 
terion, but  they  likewise  had  no  official  part  in  public  worship.2 
The  primitive  conception  of  the  sanctity  of  sexual  intercourse  in 
the  divine  service  had  been  utterly  lost. 

A  fairly  typical  example  of  the  conditions  existing  among  savages 
is  to  be  found  in  the  South  Sea  Island  of  Rotuma,  where  "prostitution 
for  money  or  gifts  was  quite  unknown."     Adultery  after  marriage  was 


1  At  Tralles,  in  Lydia,  even  in  the  second  century  A.  D.,  as  Sir 
W.  M.  Ramsay  notes  (Cities  of  Phrygia,  vol.  i,  pp.  94,  115),  sacred 
prostitution  was  still  an  honorable  practice  for  women  of  good  birth 
who  "felt  themselves  called  upon  to  live  the  divine  life  under  the  influ- 
ence of  divine  inspiration." 

2  The  gradual  secularization  of  prostitution  from  its  earlier  re- 
ligious form  has  been  traced  by  various  writers  (see,  e.g.,  Dupouey,  La 
Prostitution  dans  VAntiquite).  The  earliest  complimentary  reference  to 
the  Hetaira  in  literature  is  to  be  found,  according  to  Benecke  (Anti- 
machus  of  Colophon,  p.  36),  in  Bacchylides. 


PROSTITUTION.  235 

also  unknown.  But  there  was  great  freedom  in  the  formation  of  sexual 
relationships  before  marriage  (J.  Stanley  Gardiner,  Journal  Anthro- 
pological Institute,  February,  1898,  p.  409).  Much  the  same  is  said  of 
the  Bantu  Ba  mbola  of  Africa  (op.  cit.,  July-December,  1905,  p.  410). 

Among  the  early  Cymri  of  Wales,  representing  a  more  advanced 
social  stage,  prostitution  appears  to  have  been  not  absolutely  unknown, 
but  public  prostitution  was  punished  by  loss  of  valuable  privileges  (R. 
B.  Holt,  "Marriage  Laws  and  Customs  of  the  Cymri,"  Journal  Anthro- 
pological Institute,  August-November,  1898,  pp.  161-163). 

Prostitution  was  practically  unknown  in  Burmah,  and  regarded  as 
shameful  before  the  coming  of  the  English  and  the  example  of  the  mod- 
ern Hindus.  The  missionaries  have  unintentionally,  but  inevitably, 
favored  the  growth  of  prostitution  by  condemning  free  unions  (Archives 
d' Anthropologic  Criminelle,  November,  1903,  p.  720).  The  English 
brought  prostitution  to  India.  "That  was  not  specially  the  fault  of  the 
English,"  said  a  Brahmin  to  Jules  Bois,  "it  is  the  crime  of  your  civiliza- 
tion. We  have  never  had  prostitutes.  I  mean  by  that  horrible  word 
the  brutalized  servants  of  the  gross  desire  of  the  passerby.  We  had, 
and  we  have,  castes  of  singers  and  dancers  who  are  married  to  trees — 
yes,  to  trees — by  touching  ceremonies  which  date  from  Vedic  times;  our 
priests  bless  them  and  receive  much  money  from  them.  They  do  not 
refuse  themselves  to  those  who  love  them  and  please  them.  Kings  have 
made  them  rich.  They  represent  all  the  arts;  they  are  the  visible 
beauty  of  the  universe"  (Jules  Bois,  Visions  de  VInde,  p.  55). 

Religious  prostitutes,  it  may  be  added,  "the  servants  of  the  god," 
are  connected  with  temples  in  Southern  India  and  the  Deccan.  They 
are  devoted  to  their  sacred  calling  from  their  earliest  years,  and  it  is 
their  chief  business  to  dance  before  the  image  of  the  god,  to  whom  they 
are  married  (though  in  Upper  India  professional  dancing  girls  are  mar- 
ried to  inanimate  objects),  but  they  are  also  trained  in  arousing  and 
assuaging  the  desires  of  devotees  who  come  on  pilgrimage  to  the  shrine. 
For  the  betrothal  rites  by  which,  in  India,  sacred  prostitutes  are  con- 
secrated, see,  e.g.,  A.  Van  Gennep,  Bites  de  Passage,  p.  142. 

In  many  parts  of  Western  Asia,  where  barbarism  had  reached  a 
high  stage  of  development,  prostitution  was  not  unknown,  though  usually 
disapproved.  The  Hebrews  knew  it,  and  the  historical  Biblical  refer- 
ences to  prostitutes  imply  little  reprobation.  Jephtha  was  the  son  of  a 
prostitute,  brought  up  with  the  legitimate  children,  and  the  story  of 
Tamar  is  instructive.  But  the  legal  codes  were  extremely  severe  on 
Jewish  maidens  who  became  prostitutes  (the  offense  was  quite  tolerable 
in  strange  women),  while  Hebrew  moralists  exercised  their  invectives 
against  prostitution;  it  is  sufficient  to  refer  to  a  well-known  passage  in 
the  Book  of  Proverbs  (see  art.  "Harlot,"  by  Cheyne,  in  the  Encylopwdia, 
Biblica).     Mahomed  also  severely  condemned  prostitution,  though  some- 


236  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   SEX. 

what  more  tolerant  to  it  in  slave  women ;  according  to  Haleby,  however, 
prostitution  was  practically  unknown  in  Islam  during  the  first  centuries 
after  the  Prophet's  time. 

The  Persian  adherents  of  the  somewhat  ascetic  Zendavesta  also 
knew  prostitution,  and  regarded  it  with  repulsion:  "It  is  the  Gahi  [the 
courtesan,  as  an  incarnation  of  the  female  demon,  Gahi],  0  Spitama 
Zarathustra !  who  mixes  in  her  the  seed  of  the  faithful  and  the  unfaith- 
ful, of  the  worshipper  of  Mazda  and  the  worshipper  of  the  Dsevas,  of  the 
wicked  and  the  righteous.  Her  look  dries  up  one-third  of  the  mighty 
floods  that  run  from  the  mountains,  O  Zarathustra;  her  look  withers 
one- third  of  the  beautiful,  golden-hued,  growing  plants,  0  Zarathustra; 
her  look  withers  one-third  of  the  strength  of  Spenta  Armaiti  [the  earth]  ; 
and  her  touch  withers  in  the  faithful  one-third  of  his  good  thoughts,  of 
his  good  words,  of  his  good  deeds,  one-third  of  his  strength,  of  his  vic- 
torious power,  of  his  holiness.  Verily  I  say  unto  thee,  0  Spitama 
Zarathustra!  such  creatures  ought  to  be  killed  even  more  than  gliding 
snakes,  than  howling  wolves,  than  the  she-wolf  that  falls  upon  the  fold, 
or  than  the  she-frog  that  falls  upon  the  waters  with  her  thousandfold 
brood"  (Zend-Avesta,  the  Vendidad,  translated  by  James  Darmesteter, 
Farfad  XVIII). 

In  practice,  however,  prostitution  is  well  established  in  the  modern 
East.  Thus  in  the  Tartar-Turcoman  region  houses  of  prostitution  lying 
outside  the  paths  frequented  by  Christians  have  been  described  by  a 
writer  who  appears  to  be  well  informed  ("Orientalische  Prostitution," 
Geschlecht  und  Gesellschaft,  1907,  Bd.  ii,  Heft  1).  These  houses  are  not 
regarded  as  immoral  or  forbidden,  but  as  places  in  which  the  visitor  will 
find  a  woman  who  gives  him  for  a  few  hours  the  illusion  of  being  in  his 
own  home,  with  the  pleasure  of  enjoying  her  songs,  dances,  and  recita- 
tions, and  finally  her  body.  Payment  is  made  at  the  door,  and  no  subse- 
quent question  of  money  arises;  the  visitor  is  henceforth  among  friends, 
almost  as  if  in  his  own  family.  He  treats  the  prostitute  almost  as  if 
she  were  his  wife,  and  no  indecorum  or  coarseness  of  speech  occurs. 
"There  is  no  obscenity  in  the  Oriental  brothel."  At  the  same  time  there 
is  no  artificial  pretence  of  innocence. 

In  Eastern  Asia,  among  the  peoples  of  Mongolian  stock,  especially 
in  China,  we  find  prostitution  firmly  established  and  organized  on  a 
practical  business  basis.  Prostitution  is  here  accepted  and  viewed  with 
no  serious  disfavor,  but  the  prostitute  herself  is,  nevertheless,  treated 
with  contempt.  Young  children  are  frequently  sold  to  be  trained  to  a 
life  of  prostitution,  educated  accordingly,  and  kept  shut  up  from  the 
world.  Young  widows  (remarriage  being  disapproved)  frequently  also 
slide  into  a  life  of  prostitution.  Chinese  prostitutes  often  end  through 
opium  and  the  ravages  of  syphilis  (see,  e.g.,  Coltman's  The  Chinese,  1900, 
Ch.  VII).     In  ancient  China,  it  is  said  prostitutes  were  a  superior 


PKOSTITTJTION.  237 

class  and  occupied  a  position  somewhat  similar  to  that  of  the  hetairce  in 
Greece.  Even  in  modern  China,  however,  where  they  are  very  numerous, 
and  the  flower  boats,  in  which  in  towns  by  the  sea  they  usually  live, 
very  luxurious,  it  is  chiefly  for  entertainment,  according  to  some  writers, 
that  they  are  resorted  to.  Tschang  Ki  Tong,  military  attache  in  Paris 
(as  quoted  by  Ploss  and  Bartels),  describes  the  flower  boat  as  less 
analogous  to  a  European  brothel  than  to  a  cafe  chantant;  the  young 
Chinaman  comes  here  for  music,  for  tea,  for  agreeable  conversation  with 
the  flower -maidens,  who  are  by  no  means  necessarily  called  upon  to  min- 
ister to  the  lust  of  their  visitors. 

In  Japan,  the  prostitute's  lot  is  not  so  degraded  as  in  China.  The 
greater  refinement  of  Japanese  civilization  allows  the  prostitute  to 
retain  a  higher  degree  of  self-respect.  She  is  sometimes  regarded  with 
pity,  but  less  often  with  contempt.  She  may  associate  openly  with  men, 
ultimately  be  married,  even  to  men  of  good  social  class,  and  rank  as  a 
respectable  woman.  "In  riding  from  Tokio  to  Yokohama,  the  past  win- 
ter," Coltman  observes  (op.  cit.,  p.  113),  "I  saw  a  party  of  four  young 
men  and  three  quite  pretty  and  gaily-painted  prostitutes,  in  the  same 
car,  who  were  having  a  glorious  time.  They  had  two  or  three  bottles  of 
various  liquors,  oranges,  and  fancy  cakes,  and  they  ate,  drank  and  sang, 
besides  playing  jokes  on  each  other  and  frolicking  like  so  many  kittens. 
You  may  travel  the  whole  length  of  the  Chinese  Empire  and  never  wit- 
ness such  a  scene."  Yet  the  history  of  Japanese  prostitutes  (which  has 
been  written  in  an  interesting  and  well-informed  book,  The  Nightless 
City,  by  an  English  student  of  sociology  who  remains  anonymous)  shows 
that  prostitution  in  Japan  has  not  only  been  severely  regulated,  but 
very  widely  looked  down  upon,  and  that  Japanese  prostitutes  have  often 
had  to  suffer  greatly;  they  were  at  one  time  practically  slaves  and  often 
treated  with  much  hardship.  They  are  free  now,  and  any  condition 
approaching  slavery  is  strictly  prohibited  and  guarded  against.  It  would 
seem,  however,  that  the  palmiest  days  of  Japanese  prostitution  lay  some 
centuries  back.  Up  to  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century  Japanese 
prostitutes  were  highly  accomplished  in  singing,  dancing,  music,  etc. 
Towards  this  period,  however,  they  seem  to  have  declined  in  social  con- 
sideration and  to  have  ceased  to  be  well  educated.  Yet  even  to-day,  says 
Matignon  ("La  Prostitution  an  Japon,"  Archives  d' Anthropologic  Crimi- 
nelle,  October,  1906),  less  infamy  attaches  to  prostitution  in  Japan  than 
in  Europe,  while  at  the  same  time  there  is  less  immorality  in  Japan 
than  in  Europe.  Though  prostitution  is  organized  like  the  postal  or 
telegraph  service,  there  is  also  much  clandestine  prostitution.  The 
prostitution  quarters  are  clean,  beautiful  and  well-kept,  but  the  Japanese 
prostitutes  have  lost  much  of  their  native  good  taste  in  costume  by  try- 
ing to  imitate  European  fashions.  It  was  when  prostitution  began  to 
decline  two  centuries  ago,   that  the  geishas   first  appeared  and  were 


238  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   SEX. 

organized  in  such  a  way  that  they  should  not,  if  possible,  compete  as 
prostitutes  with  the  recognized  and  licensed  inhabitants  of  the  Yoshi- 
wara,  as  the  quarter  is  called  ,to  which  prostitutes  are  confined.  The 
geishas,  of  course,  are  not  prostitutes,  though  their  virtue  may  not 
always  be  impregnable,  and  in  social  position  they  correspond  to 
actresses  in  Europe. 

In  Korea,  at  all  events  before  Korea  fell  into  the  hands  of  the 
Japanese,  it  would  seem  that  there  was  no  distinction  between  the 
class  of  dancing  girls  and  prostitutes.  "Among  the  courtesans,"  Angus 
Hamilton  states,  "the  mental  abilities  are  trained  and  developed  with  a 
view  to  making  them  brilliant  and  entertaining  companions.  These 
'leaves  of  sunlight'  are  called  gisaing,  and  correspond  to  the  geishas  of 
Japan.  Officially,  they  are  attached  to  a  department  of  government,  and 
are  controlled  by  a  bureau  of  their  own,  in  common  with '  the  Court 
musicians.  They  are  supported  from  the  national  treasury,  and  they  are 
in  evidence  at  official  dinners  and  all  palace  entertainments.  They  read 
and  recite;  they  dance  and  sing;  they  become  accomplished  artists  and 
musicians.  They  dress  with  exceptional  taste;  they  move  with  exceed- 
ing grace;  they  are  delicate  in  appearance,  very  frail  and  very  human, 
very  tender,  sympathetic,  and  imaginative."  But  though  they  are  cer- 
tainly the  prettiest  women  in  Korea,  move  in  the  highest  society,  and 
might  become  concubines  of  the  Emperor,  they  are  not  allowed  to 
marry  men  of  good  class  (Angus  Hamilton,  Korea,  p.  52). 

The  history  of  European  prostitution,  as  of  so  many  other 
modern  institutions,  may  properly  be  said  to  begin  in  Eome. 
Here  at  the  outset  we  already  find  that  inconsistently  mixed 
attitude  towards  prostitution  which  to-day  is  still  preserved.  In 
Greece  it  was  in  many  respects  different.  Greece  was  nearer  to 
the  days  of  religious  prostitution,  and  the  sincerity  and  refine- 
ment of  Greek  civilization  made  it  possible  for  the  better  kind  of 
prostitute  to  exert,  and  often  be  worthy  to  exert,  an  influence  in 
all  departments  of  life  which  she  has  never  been  able  to  exercise 
since,  except  perhaps  occasionally,  in  a  much  slighter  degree,  in 
France.  The  course,  vigorous,  practical  Eoman  was  quite  ready 
to  tolerate  the  prostitute,  but  he  was  not  prepared  to  carry  that 
toleration  to  its  logical  results ;  he  never  felt  bound  to  harmonize 
inconsistent  facts  of  life.  Cicero,  a  moralist  of  no  mean  order, 
without  expressing  approval  of  prostitution,  yet  could  not  under- 
stand how  anyone  should  wish  to  prohibit  youths  from  commerce 


PROSTITUTION.  239 

with  prostitutes,  such  severity  being  out  of  harmony  with  all  the 
customs  of  the  past  or  the  present.1  But  the  superior  class  of 
Eoman  prostitutes,  the  bonce  mulieres,  had  no  such  dignified 
position  as  the  Greek  lietairce.  Their  influence  was  indeed 
immense,  but  it  was  confined,  as  it  is  in  the  case  of  their  European 
successors  to-day,  to  fashions,  customs,  and  arts.  There  was 
always  a  certain  moral  rigidity  in  the  Eoman  which  prevented 
him  from  yielding  far  in  this  direction.  He  encouraged  brothels, 
but  he  only  entered  them  with  covered  head  and  face  concealed 
in  his  cloak.  In  the  same  way,  while  he  tolerated  the  prostitute, 
beyond  a  certain  point  he  sharply  curtailed  her  privileges.  Not 
only  was  she  deprived  of  all  influence  in  the  higher  concerns  of 
life,  but  she  might  not  even  wear  the  vitta  or  the  stola;  she  could 
indeed  go  almost  naked  if  she  pleased,  but  she  must  not  ape  the 
emblems  of  the  respectable  Eoman  matron.2 

The  rise  of  Christianity  to  political  power  produced  on  the 
whole  less  change  of  policy  than  might  have  been  anticipated. 
The  Christian  rulers  had  to  deal  practically  as  best  they  might 
with  a  very  mixed,  turbulent,  and  semi-pagan  world.  The  lead- 
ing fathers  of  the  Church  were  inclined  to  tolerate  prostitution 
for  the  avoidance  of  greater  evils,  and  Christian  emperors,  like 
their  pagan  predecessors,  were  willing  to  derive  a  tax  from  pros- 
titution. The  right  of  prostitution  to  exist  was,  however,  no 
longer  so  unquestionably  recognized  as  in  pagan  days,  and  from 
time  to  time  some  vigorous  ruler  sought  to  repress  prostitution 
by  severe  enactments.  The  younger  Theodosius  and  Valentinian 
definitely  ordained  that  there  should  be  no  more  brothels  and  that 
anyone  giving  shelter  to  a  prostitute  should  be  punished. 
Justinian  confirmed  that  measure  and  ordered  that  all  panders 
were  to  be  exiled  on  pain  of  death.  These  enactments  were  quite 
vain.  But  during  a  thousand  years  they  were  repeated  again  and 
again  in  various  parts  of  Europe,  and  invariably  with  the  same 
fruitless  or  worse  than  fruitless  results.     Theodoric,  king  of  the 

1  Cicero,  Oratio  pro  Coelio,  Cap.  XX. 

2  Pierre  Dufour,  Histoire  de  la  Prostitution,  vol.  ii,  Chs.  XIX-XX. 
The  real  author  of  this  well-known  history  of  prostitution,  which,  though 
not  scholarly  in  its  methods,  brings  together  a  great  mass  of  interesting 
information,  is  said  to  be  Paul  Lacroix. 


240  PSYCHOLOGY    OP    SEX. 

Visigoths,  punished  with  death  those  who  promoted  prostitution, 
and  Eecared,  a  Catholic  king  of  the  same  people  in  the  sixth 
century,  prohibited  prostitution  altogether  and  ordered  that  a 
prostitute,  when  found,  should  receive  three  hundred  strokes  of 
the  whip  and  be  driven  out  of  the  city.  Charlemagne,  as  well 
as  Genserich  in  Carthage,  and  later  Frederick  Barbarossa  in 
Germany,  made  severe  laws  against  prostitution  which  were  all 
of  no  effect,  for  even  if  they  seemed  to  be  effective  for  the  time 
the  reaction  was  all  the  greater  afterwards.1 

It  is  in  France  that  the  most  persistent  efforts  have  been 
made  to  combat  prostitution.  Most  notable  of  all  were  the 
efforts  of  the  King  and  Saint,  Louis  IX.  In  1254  St.  Louis 
ordained  that  prostitutes  should  be  driven  out  altogether  and 
deprived  of  all  their  money  and  goods,  even  to  their  mantles  and 
gowns.  In  1256  he  repeated  this  ordinance  and  in  1269,  before 
setting  out  for  the  Crusades,  he  ordered  the  destruction  of  all 
places  of  prostitution.  The  repetition  of  those  decrees  shows  how 
ineffectual  they  were.  They  even  made  matters  worse,  for  pros- 
titutes were  forced  to  mingle  with  the  general  population  and 
their  influence  was  thus  extended.  St.  Louis  was  unable  to  put 
down  prostitution  even  in  his  own  camp  in  the  East,  and  it 
existed  outside  his  own  tent.  His  legislation,  however,  was 
frequently  imitated  by  subsequent  rulers  of  France,  even  to  the 
middle  of  the  seventeenth  century,  always  with  the  same  ineffect- 
ual and  worse  results.  In  1560  an  edict  of  Charles  IX  abolished 
brothels,  but  the  number  of  prostitutes  was  thereby  increased 
rather  than  diminished,  while  many  new  kinds  of  brothels 
appeared  in  unsuspected  shapes  and  were  more  dangerous  than 
the  more  recognized  brothels  which  had  been  suppressed.2  In 
spite  of  all  such  legislation,  or  because  of  it,  there  has  been  no 
country  in  which  prostitution  has  played  a  more  conspicuous 
part.3 


i  Rabutaux,  in  his  Eistoire  de  la  Prostitution  en  Europe,  describes 
many  attempts  to  suppress  prostitution;    cf.  Dufour,  op.  cit.,  vol.  iii. 

2  Dufour,  op.  cit.,  vol.  vi,  Ch.  XLI.     It  was  in  the  reign  of  the 
homosexual  Henry  III  that  the  tolerance  of  brothels  was  established. 

3  In  the  eighteenth  century,  especially,  houses  of  prostitution  in 
Paris  attained  to  an  astonishing  degree  of  elaboration  and  prosperity. 


PROSTITUTION.  241 

At  Mantua,  so'  great  was  the  repulsion  aroused  by  prostitutes 
that  they  were  compelled  to  buy  in  the  markets  any  fruit  or 
bread  that  had  been  soiled  by  the  mere  touch  of  their  hands.  It 
was  so  also  in  Avignon  in  1243.  In  Catalonia  they  could  not 
sit  at  the  same  table  as  a  lady  or  a  knight  or  kiss  any  honorable 
person.1  Even  in  Venice,  the  paradise  of  prostitution,  numerous 
and  severe  regulations  were  passed  against  it,  and  it  was  long 
before  the  Venetian  rulers  resigned  themselves  to  its  toleration 
and  regulation.2 

The  last  vigorous  attempt  to  uproot  prostitution  in  Europe 
was  that  of  Maria  Theresa  at  Vienna  in  the  middle  of  the 
eighteenth  century.  Although  of  such  recent  date  it  may  be 
mentioned  here  because  it  was  mediaeval  alike  in  its  conception 
and  methods.  Its  object  indeed,  was  to  suppress  not  only  prosti- 
tution, but  fornication  generally,  and  the  means  adopted  were 
fines,  imprisonment,  whipping  and  torture.  The  supposed  causes 
of  fornication  were  also  dealt  with  severely;  short  dresses  were 
prohibited;  billiard  rooms  and  cafes  were  inspected;  no  wait- 
resses were  allowed,  and  when  discovered,  a  waitress  was  liable 
to  be  handcuffed  and  carried  off  by  the  police.  The  Chastity 
Commission,  under  which  these  measures  were  rigorously  carried 
out,  was,  apparently,  established  in  1751  and  was  quietly 
abolished  by  the  Emperor  Joseph  II,  in  the  early  years  of  his 
reign.  It  was  the  general  opinion  that  this  severe  legislation 
was  really  ineffective,  and  that  it  caused  much  more  serious  evils 
than  it  cured.3     It  is  certain  in  any  case  that,  for  a  long  time 

Owing  to  the  constant  watchful  attention  of  the  police  a  vast  amount  of 
detailed  information  concerning  these  establishments  was  accumulated, 
and  during  recent  years  much  of  it  has  been  published.  A  summary  of 
this  literature  will  be  found  in  Duhren's  Neue  Forshungen  iiber  den  Mar- 
quis de  Sade  und  seine  Zeit,  1904,  pp.  97  et  seq. 

1  Rabutaux,  op.  cit^,  p.  54. 

2  Calza  has  written  the  history  of  Venetian  prostitution;  and  some 
of  the  documents  he  found  have  been  reproduced  by  Mantegazza,  Gli 
Amori  degli  Uomimi,  cap.  XIV.  At  the  beginning  of  the  seventeenth  cen- 
tury, a  comparatively  late  period,  Coryat  visited  Venice,  and  in  his 
Crudities  gives  a  full  and  interesting  account  of  its  courtesans,  who  then 
numbered,  he  says,  at  least  20.000;  the  revenue  they  brought  into  the 
State  maintained  a  dozen  galleys. 

3  J.  Schrank,  Die  Prostitution  in  Wien,  Bd.  I,  pp.  152-206.- 

16 


242  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   SEX. 

past,  illegitimacy  has  been  more  prevalent  in  Vienna  than  in  any 
other  great  European  capital. 

Yet  the  attitude  towards  prostitutes  was  always  mixed  and 
inconsistent  at  different  places  or  different  times,  or  even  at  the 
same  time  and  place.  Dufour  has  aptly  compared  their  position 
to  that  of  the  mediaeval  Jews ;  they  were  continually  persecuted, 
ecclesiastically,  civilly,  and  socially,  yet  all  classes  were  glad  to 
have  recourse  to  them  and  it  was  impossible  to  do  without  them. 
In  some  countries,  including  England  in  the  fourteenth  century, 
a  special  costume  was  imposed  on  prostitutes  as  a  mark  of 
infamy.1  Yet  in  many  respects  no  infamy  whatever  attached 
to  prostitution.  High  placed  officials  could  claim  payment  of 
their  expenses  incurred  in  visiting  prostitutes  when  traveling  on 
public  business.  Prostitution  sometimes  played  an  official  part 
in  festivities  and  receptions  accorded  by  great  cities  to  royal 
guests,  and  the  brothel  might  form  an  important  part  of  the 
city's  hospitality.  When  the  Emperor  Sigismund  came  to  Ulm 
in  1434  the  streets  were  illuminated  at  such  times  as  he  or  his 
suite  desired  to  visit  the  common  brothel.  Brothels  under 
municipal  protection  are  found  in  the  thirteenth  century  in 
Augsburg,  in  Vienna,  in  Hamburg.2  In  France  the  best  known 
abbayes  of  prostitutes  were  those  of  Toulouse  and  Montpellier.3 
Durkheim  is  of  opinion  that  in  the  early  middle  ages,  before  this 
period,  free  love  and  marriage  were  less  severely  differentiated. 
It  was  the  rise  of  the  middle  class,  he  considers,  anxious  to  pro- 
tect their  wives  and  daughters,  which  led  to  a  regulated  and 
publicly  recognized  attempt  to  direct  debauchery  into  a  separate 
channel,  brought  under  control.4  These  brothels  constituted  a 
kind  of  public  service,  the  directors  of  them  being  regarded  almost 
as  public  officials,  bound  to  keep  a  certain  number  of  prostitutes, 
to  charge  according  to  a  fixed  tariff,  and  not  to  receive  into  their 
houses  girls  belonging  to  the  neighborhood.     The  institutions  of 

1  U.  Robert,  Les  Signes  d'Infamie  au  Moyen  Age,  Ch.  IV. 

2  Rudeck  ( Geschiclite  der  djfentlichen  Sittlichkeit  in  Deutsohland, 
pp.  26-36)  gives  many  details  concerning  the  important  part  played  by 
prostitutes  and  brothels  in  mediaeval  German  life. 

3  They  are  described  by  Eabutaux,  op.  cit.,  pp.  90  et  seq. 
^L'Annee  Sociologique,  seventh  year,  1904,  p.  440. 


PROSTITUTION.  243 

this  kind  lasted  for  three  centuries.  It  was,  in  part,  perhaps,  the 
impetus  of  the  new  Protestant  movement,  but  mainly  the  terrible 
devastation  produced  by  the  introduction  of  syphilis  from 
America  at  the  end  of  the  fifteenth  century  which,  as  Burckhardt 
and  others  have  pointed  out,  led  to  the  decline  of  the  mediaeval 
brothels.1 

The  superior  modern  prostitute,  the  "courtesan"  who  had  no 
connection  with  the  brothel,  seems  to  have  been  the  outcome  of 
the  Eenaissance  and  made  her  appearance  in  Italy  at  the  end  of 
the  fifteenth  century.  "Courtesan"  or  "eortegiana"  meant  a 
lady  following  the  court,  and  the  term  began  at  this  time  to  be 
applied  to  a  superior  prostitute  observing  a  certain  degree  of 
decorum  and  restraint.2  In  the  papal  court  of  Alexander  Borgia 
the  courtesan  nourished  even  when  her  conduct  was  not  alto- 
gether dignified.  Burchard,  the  faithful  and  unimpeachable 
chronicler  of  this  court,  describes  in  his  diary  how,  one  evening, 
in  October,  1501,  the  Pope  sent  for  fifty  courtesans  to  be  brought 
to  his  chamber;  after  supper,  in  the  presence  of  Caesar  Borgia 
and  his  young  sister  Lucrezia,  they  danced  with  the  servitors  and 
others  who  were  present,  at  first  clothed,  afterwards  naked.  The 
candlesticks  with  lighted  candles  were  then  placed  upon  the  floor 
and  chestnuts  thrown  among  them,  to  be  gathered  by  the  women 
crawling  between  the  candlesticks  on  their  hands  and  feet. 
Finally  a  number  of  prizes  were  brought  forth  to  be  awarded  to 
those  men  "qui  pluries  dictos  meretrices  carnaliter  agnoscerent," 
the  victor  in  the  contest  being  decided  according  to  the  judgment 
of  the  spectators.3     This  scene,  enacted  publicly  in  the  Apostolic 


1  Bloch,  Der  Ursprung  der  Syphilis.  As  regards  the  German 
"Frauenhausen"  see  Max  Bauer,  Das  Geschlechtsleben  in  der  Deutschen 
Vergangenheit,  pp.  133-214.  In  Paris,  Dufour  states  (op.  cit.,  vol.  v, 
Ch.  XXXIV),  brothels  under  the  ordinances  of  St.  Louis  had  many  rights 
which  they  lost  at  last  in  1560,  when  they  became  merely  tolerated 
houses,  without  statutes,  special  costumes,  or  confinement  to  special 
streets. 

2  "Cortegiana,  hoc  est  meretrix  honesta,"  wrote  Burchard,  the 
Pope's  Secretary,  at  the  beginning  of  the  sixteenth  century,  Diarium,  ed. 
Thuasne,  vol.  ii,  p.  442;  other  authorities  are  quoted  by  Thuasne  in  a 
note. 

3  Burchard,  Diarium,  vol.  iii,  p.  167.  Thuasne  quotes  other  au- 
thorities in  confirmation. 


244  PSYCHOLOGY   OP    SEX. 

palace  and  serenely  set  forth  by  the  impartial  secretary,  is  at  once 
a  notable  episode  in  the  history  of  modern  prostitution  and  one  of 
the  most  illuminating  illustrations  we  possess  of  the  paganism  of 
the  Eenaissance. 

Before  the  term  "courtesan"  came  into  repute,  prostitutes  were 
even  in  Italy  commonly  called  ."sinners,"  peccatrice.  The  change,  Graf 
remarks  in  a  very  interesting  study  of  the  Eenaissance  prostitute  ("Una 
Cortigiana  fra  Mille,"  Attraverso  il  Cinquecento,  pp.  217-351),  "reveals  a 
profound  alteration  in  ideas  and  in  life;"  a  term  that  suggested  infamy 
gave  place  to  one  that  suggested  approval,  and  even  honor,  for  the  courts 
of  the  Renaissance  period  represented  the  finest  culture  of  the  time. 
The  best  of  these  courtesans  seem  to  have  been  not  altogether  unworthy 
of  the  honor  they  received.  We  can  detect  this  in  their  letters.  There 
is  a  chapter  on  the  letters  of  Renaissance  prostitutes,  especially  those 
of  Camilla  de  Pisa  which  are  marked  by  genuine  passion,  in  Lothar 
Schmidt's  Frauenhriefe  der  Renaissance.  The  famous  Imperia,  called 
by  a  Pope  in  the  early  years  of  the  sixteenth  century  "nobilissimum 
Romse  scortum,"  knew  Latin  and  could  write  Italian  verse.  Other 
courtesans  knew  Italian  and  Latin  poetry  by  heart,  while  they  were 
accomplished  in  music,  dancing,  and  speech.  We  are  reminded  of  ancient 
Greece,  and  Graf,  discussing  how  far  the  Renaissance  courtesans  resem- 
bled the  hetairse,  finds  a  very  considerable  likeness,  especially  in  culture 
and  influence,  though  with  some  differences  due  to  the  antagonism 
between  religion  and  prostitution  at  the  later  period. 

The  most  distinguished  figure  in  every  respect  among  the  courtesans 
of  that  time  was  certainly  Tullia  D'Aragona.  She  was  probably  the 
daughter  of  Cardinal  D'Aragona  (an  illegitimate  scion  of  the  Spanish 
royal  family)  by  a  Ferrarese  courtesan  who  became  his  mistress.  Tullia 
has  gained  a  high  reputation  by  her  verse.  Her  best  sonnet  is  addressed 
to  a  youth  of  twenty,  whom  she  passionately  loved,  but  who  did  not 
return  her  love.  Her  Guerrino  Meschino,  a  translation  from  the  Span- 
ish, is  a  very  pure  and  chaste  work.  She  was  a  woman  of  refined 
instincts  and  aspirations,  and  once  at  least  she  abandoned  her  life  of 
prostitution.  She  was  held  in  high  esteem  and  respect.  When,  in  1546, 
Cosimo,  Duke  of  Florence,  ordered  all  prostitutes  to  wear  a  yellow  veil 
or  handkerchief  as  a  public  badge  of  their  profession,  Tullia  appealed 
to  the  Duchess,  a  Spanish  lady  of  high  character,  and  received  permission 
to  dispense  with  this  badge  on  account  of  her  "rara  scienzia  di  poesia 
et  filosofia."  She  dedicated  her  Rime  to  the  Duchess.  Tullia  D'Aragona 
was  very  beautiful,  with  yellow  hair,  and  remarkably  large  and  bright 
eyes,  which  dominated  those  who  came  near  her.  She  was  of  proud 
bearing  and  inspired  unusual  respect   (G.  Biagi,  "Un'  Etera  Romana," 


PKOSTITUTIOX.  245 

Nuova  Antologia,  vol.  iv,  1886,  pp.  655-711;  S.  Bongi,  Bivista  critica 
della  Letteratura  Italiana,  1886,  IV,  p.  186). 

Tullia  D'Aragona  was  clearly  not  a  courtesan  at  heart.  Perhaps 
the  most  typical  example  of  the  Renaissance  courtesan  at  her  best  is 
furnished  by  Veronica  Franco,  born  in  1546  at  Venice,  of  middle  class 
family  and  in  early  life  married  to  a  doctor.  Of  her  also  it  has  been 
said  that,  while  by  profession  a  prostitute,  she  was  by  inclination  a  poet. 
But  she  appears  to  have  been  well  content  with  her  profession,  and 
never  ashamed  of  it.  Her  life  and  character  have  been  studied  by 
Arturo  Graf,  and  more  slightly  in  a  little  book  by  Tassini.  She  was 
highly  cultured,  and  knew  several  languages;  she  also  sang  well  and 
played  on  many  instruments.  In  one  of  her  letters  she  advises  a  youth 
who  was  madly  in  love  with  her  that  if  he  wishes  to  obtain  her  favor3 
he  must  leave  off  importuning  her  and  devote  himself  tranquilly  to 
study.  "You  know  well,"  she  adds,  "that  all  those  who  claim  to  be  able 
to  gain  my  love,  and  who  are  extremely  dear  to  me,  are  strenuous  in 

studious  discipline If  my  fortune  allowed  it  I  would  spend 

all  my  time  quietly  in  the  academies  of  virtuous  men."  The  Diotimas 
and  Aspasias  of  antiquity,  as  Graf  comments,  would  not  have  demanded 
so  much  of  their  lovers.  In  her  poems  it  is  possible  to  trace  some  of 
her  love  histories,  and  she  often  shows  herself  torn  by  jealousy  at  the 
thought  that  perhaps  another  woman  may  approach  her  beloved.  Once 
she  fell  in  love  with  an  ecclesiastic,  possibly  a  bishop,  with  whom  she 
had  no  relationships,  and  after  a  long  absence,  which  healed  her  love, 
she  and  he  became  sincere  friends.  Once  she  was  visited  by  Henry  III 
of  France,  who  took  away  her  portrait,  while  on  her  part  she  promised 
to  dedicate  a  book  to  him;  she  so  far  fulfilled  this  as  to  address  some 
sonnets  to  him  and  a  letter;  "neither  did  the  King  feel  ashamed  of  his 
intimacy  with  the  courtesan,"  remarks  Graf,  "nor  did  she  suspect  that 
he  would  feel  ashamed  of  it."  When  Montaigne  passed  through  Venice 
she  sent  him  a  little  book  of  hers,  as  we  learn  from  his  Journal,  though 
they  do  not  appear  to  have  met.  Tintoret  was  one  of  her  many  distin- 
guished friends,  and  she  was  a  strenuous  advocate  of  the  high  qualities 
of  modern,  as  compared  with  ancient,  art.  Her  friendships  were  affec- 
tionate, and  she  even  seems  to  have  had  various  grand  ladies  among  her 
friends.  She  was,  however,  so  far  from  being  ashamed  of  her  profession 
of  courtesan  that  in  one  of  her  poems  she  affirms  she  has  been  taught 
by  Apollo  other  arts  besides  those  he  is  usually  regarded  as  teaching: 

"Cosi  dolce  e  gustevole  divento, 
Quando  mi  trovo  con  persona  in  letto 
Da  cui  amata  e  gradita  mi  sento." 

In  a  certain  catalogo  of  the  prices  of  Venetian  courtesans  Veronica 
is  assigned  only  2  scudi  for  her  favors,  while  the  courtesan  to  whom  the 


246  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   SEX. 

catalogue  is  dedicated  is  set  down  at  25  scudi.  Graf  thinks  there  may 
be  some  mistake  or  malice  here,  and  an  Italian  gentleman  of  the  time 
states  that  she  required  not  less  than  50  scudi  from  those  to  whom  she 
was  willing  to  accord  what  Montaigne  called  the  "negotiation  entiere." 

In  regard  to  this  matter  it  may  be  mentioned  that,  as  stated  by 
Bandello,  it  was  the  custom  for  a  Venetian  prostitute  to  have  six  or 
seven  gentlemen  at  a  time  as  her  lovers.  Each  was  entitled  to  come  to 
sup  and  sleep  with  her  on  one  night  of  the  week,  leaving  her  days  free. 
They  paid  her  so  much  per  month,  but  she  always  definitely  reserved  the 
right  to  receive  a  stranger  passing  through  Venice,  if  she  wished,  chang- 
ing the  time  of  her  appointment  with  her  lover  for  the  night.  The  high 
and  special  prices  which  we  find  recorded  are,  of  course,  those  demanded 
from  the  casual  distinguished  stranger  who  came  to  Venice  as,  once  in 
the  sixteenth  century,  Montaigne  came. 

In  1580  (when  not  more  than  thirty- four)  Veronica  confessed  to 
the  Holy  Office  that  she  had  had  six  children.  In  the  same  year  she 
formed  the  design  of  founding  a  home,  which  should  not  be  a  monastery, 
where  prostitutes  who  wished  to  abandon  their  mode  of  life  could  find  a 
refuge  with  their  children,  if  they  had  any.  This  seems  to  have  led  to  the 
establishment  of  a  Casa  del  Soccorso.  In  1591  she  died  of  fever,  recon- 
ciled with  God  and  blessed  by  many  unfortunates.  She  had  a  good  heart 
and  a  sound  intellect,  and  was  the  last  of  the  great  Renaissance  courte- 
sans who  revived  Greek  hetairism  (Graf,  Attraverso  U  Cinquecento,  pp. 
217-351).  Even  in  sixteenth  century  Venice,  however,  it  will  be  seen, 
Veronica  Franco  seems  to  have  been  not  altogether  at  peace  in  the  career 
of  a  courtesan.  She  was  clearly  not  adapted  for  ordinary  marriage,  yet 
under  the  most  favorable  conditions  that  the  modern  world  has  ever 
offered  it  may  still  be  doubted  whether  a  prostitute's  career  can  offer 
complete  satisfaction  to  a  woman  of  large  heart  and  brain. 

Ninon  de  Lenclos,  who  is  frequently  called  "the  last  of  the  great 
courtesans,"  may  seem  an  exception  to  the  general  rule  as  to  the  inabil- 
ity of  a  woman  of  good  heart,  high  character,  and  fine  intelligence  to 
find  satisfaction  in  a  prostitute's  life.  But  it  is  a  total  misconception 
alike  of  Mnon  de  Lenclos's  temperament  and  her  career  to  regard  her 
as  in  any  true  sense  a  prostitute  at  all.  A  knowledge  of  even  the  barest 
outlines  of  her  life  ought  to  prevent  such  a  mistake.  Born  early  in  the 
seventeenth  century,  she  was  of  good  family  on  both  sides;  her  mother 
was  a  woman  of  severe  life,  but  her  father,  a  gentleman  of  Touraine, 
inspired  her  with  his  own  Epicurean  philosophy  as  well  as  his  love  of 
music.  She  was  extremely  well  educated.  At  the  age  of  sixteen  or 
seventeen  she  had  her  first  lover,  the  noble  and  valiant  Gaspard  de 
Coligny;  he  was  followed  for  half  a  century  by  a  long  succession  of 
other  lovers,  sometimes  more  than  one  at  a  time;  three  years  was  the 
longest  period  during  which  she  was  faithful  to  one  lover.     Her  attrac- 


PROSTITUTION.  247 

tions  lasted  so  long  that,  it  is  said,  three  generations  of  Sevigngs  were 
among  her  lovers.  Tallemant  des  Beaux  enables  us  to  study  in  detail 
her  liaisons. 

It  is  not,  however,  the  abundance  of  lovers  which  makes  a  woman 
a  prostitute,  but  the  nature  of  her  relationships  with  them.  Sainte- 
Beuve,  in  an  otherwise  admirable  study  of  Ninon  de  Lenclos  (Causeries 
du  Lundi,  vol.  iv),  seems  to  reckon  her  among  the  courtesans.  But  no 
woman  is  a  prostitute  unless  she  uses  men  as  a  source  of  pecuniary 
gain.  Not  only  is  there  no  evidence  that  this  was  the  case  with  Ninon, 
but  all  the  evidence  excludes  such  a  relationship.  "It  required  much 
skill,"  said  Voltaire,  "and  a  great  deal  of  love  on  her  part,  to  induce 
her  to  accept  presents."  Tallemant,  indeed,  says  that  she  sometimes 
took  money  from  her  lovers,  but  this  statement  probably  involves  noth- 
ing beyond  what  is  contained  in  Voltaire's  remark,  and,  in  any  case, 
Tallemant's  gossip,  though  usually  well-informed,  was  not  always  re- 
liable.    All  are  agreed  as  to  her  extreme  disinterestedness. 

When  we  hear  precisely  of  Ninon  de  Lenclos  in  connection  with 
money,  it  is  not  as  receiving  a  gift,  but  only  as  repaying  a  debt  to  an 
old  lover,  or  restoring  a  large  sum  left  with  her  for  safe  keeping  when 
the  owner  was  exiled.  Such  incidents  are  far  from  suggesting  the  pro- 
fessional prostitute  of  any  age;  they  are  rather  the  relationships  which 
might  exist  between  men  friends.  Ninon  de  Lenclos's  character  was  in 
many  respects  far  from  perfect,  but  she  combined  many  masculine  vir- 
tues, and  especially  probity,  with  a  temperament  which,  on  the  whole, 
was  certainly  feminine;  she  hated  hypocrisy,  and  she  was  never  influ- 
enced by  pecuniary  considerations.  She  was,  moreover,  never  reckless, 
but  always  retained  a  certain  self-restraint  and  temperance,  even  in  eat- 
ing and  drinking,  and,  we  are  told,  she  never  drank  wine.  She  was,  as 
Sainte-Beuve  has  remarked,  the  first  to  realize  that  there  must  be  the 
same  virtues  for  men  and  for  women,  and  that  it  is  absurd  to  reduce  all 
feminine  virtues  to  one.  "Our  sex  has  been  burdened  with  all  the 
frivolities,"  she  wrote,  "and  men  have  reserved  to  themselves  the  essen- 
tial qualities :  I  have  made  myself  a  man."  She  sometimes  dressed  as  a 
man  when  riding  (see,  e.g.,  Correspondence  Authentique  of  Ninon  de 
Lenclos,  with  a  good  introduction  by  Emile  Colombey).  Consciously  or 
not,  she  represented  a  new  feminine  idea  at  a  period  when — as  we  may 
see  in  many  forgotten  novels  written  by  the  women  of  that  time — ideas 
were  beginning  to  emerge  in  the  feminine  sphere.  She  was  the  first,  and 
doubtless,  from  one  point  of  view,  the  most  extreme  representative  of  a 
small  and  distinguished  group  of  French  women  among  whom  Georges 
Sand  is  the  finest  personality. 

Thus  it  is  idle  to  attempt  to  adorn  the  history  of  prostitution  with 
the  name  of  Ninon  de  Lenclos.  A  debauched  old  prostitute  would  never, 
like  Ninon  towards  the  end  of  her  long  life,  have  been  able  to  retain  or 


248  PSYCHOLOGY   OF  SEX. 

to  conquer  the  affection  and  the  esteem  of  many  of  the  best  men  and 
women  of  her  time;  even  to  the  austere  Saint-Simon  it  seemed  that 
there  reigned  in  her  little  court  a  decorum  which  the  greatest  princesses 
cannot  achieve.  She  was  not  a  prostitute,  but  a  woman  of  unique  per- 
sonality with  a  little  streak  of  genius  in  it.  That  she  was  inimitable 
we  need  not  perhaps  greatly  regret.  In  her  old  age,  in  1699,  her  old 
friend  and  former  lover,  Saint-Evremond,  wrote  to  her,  with  only  a  little 
exaggeration,  that  there  were  few  princesses  and  few  saints  who  would 
not  leave  their  courts  and  their  cloisters  to  change  places  with  her.  "If 
I  had  known  beforehand  what  my  life  would  be  I  would  have  hanged 
myself,"  was  her  oft-quoted  answer.  It  is,  indeed,  a  solitary  phrase  that 
slips  in,  perhaps  as  the  expression  of  a  momentary  mood;  one  may  make 
too  much  of  it.  More  truly  characteristic  is  the  fine  saying  in  which 
her  Epicurean  philosophy  seems  to  stretch  out  towards  Nietzsche:  "La 
joie  de  l'esprit  en  marque  la  force." 

The  frank  acceptance  of  prostitution  b}^  the  spiritual  or  even 
the  temporal  power  has  since  the  Eenaissance  become  more  and 
more  exceptional.  The  opposite  extreme  of  attempting  to  uproot 
prostitution  has  also  in  practice  been  altogether  abandoned. 
Sporadic  attempts  have  indeed  been  made,  here  and  there,  to  put 
down  prostitution  with  a  strong  hand  even  in  quite  modern  times. 
It  is  now,  however,  realized  that  in  such  a  case  the  remedy  is 
worse  than  the  disease. 

In  1860  a  Mayor  of  Portsmouth  felt  it  his  duty  to  attempt  to  sup- 
press prostitution.  "In  the  early  part  of  his  mayoralty,"  according  to 
a  witness  before  the  Select  Committee  on  the  Contagious  Diseases  Acts 
(p.  393),  "there  was  an  order  passed  that  every  beerhouse-keeper  and 
licensed  victualer  in  the  borough  known  to  harbor  these  women  would 
be  dealt  with,  and  probably  lose  his  license.  On  a  given  day  about  three 
hundred  or  four  hundred  of  these  forlorn  outcasts  were  bundled  whole- 
sale into  the  streets,  and  they  formed  up  in  a  large  body,  many  of  them 
with  only  a  shift  and  a  petticoat  on,  and  with  a  lot  of  drunken  men  and 
boys  with  a  fife  and  fiddle  they  paraded  the  streets  for  several  days. 
They  marched  in  a  body  to  the  workhouse,  but  for  many  reasons  they 

were  refused  admittance These  women  wandered  about  for 

two  or  three  days  shelterless,  and  it  was  felt  that  the  remedy  was  very 
much  worse  than  the  disease,  and  the  women  were  allowed  to  go  back  to 
their  former  places." 

Similar  experiments  have  been  made  even  more  recently  in  America. 
"In  Pittsburg,  Pennsylvania,  in  1891,   the  houses  of  prostitutes  were 


PROSTITUTION.  249 

closed,  the  inmates  turned  out  upon  the  streets,  and  were  refused  lodg- 
ing and  even  food  by  the  citizens  of  that  place.  A  wave  of  popular 
remonstrance,  all  over  the  country,  at  the  outrage  on  humanity,  created 
a  reaction  which  resulted  in  a  last  condition  by  no  means  better  than 
the  first."  In  the  same  year  also  a  similar  incident  occurred  in  New 
York  with  the  same  unfortunate  results  (Isidore  Dyer,  "The  Municipal 
Control  of  Prostitution  in  the  United  States,"  report  presented  to  the 
Brussels  International  Conference  in  1899). 

There  grew  up  instead  the,  tendency  to  regulate  prostitution, 
to  give  it  a  semi-official  toleration  which  enabled  the  authorities 
to  exercise  a  control  over  it,  and  to  guard  as  far  as  possible 
against  its  evil  by  medical  and  police  inspection.  The  new 
brothel  system  differed  from  the  ancient  mediaeval  houses  of 
prostitution  in  important  respects;  it  involved  a  routine  of 
medical  inspection  and  it  endeavored  to  suppress  any  rivalry  by 
unlicensed  prostitutes  outside.  Bernard  Mandeville,  the  author 
of  the  Fable  of  the  Bees,  and  an  acute  thinker,  was  a  pioneer  in 
the  advocacy  of  this  system.  In  1724,  in  his  Modest  Defense  of 
Publich  Stews,  he  argues  that  "the  encouraging  of  public  whoring 
will  not  only  prevent  most  of  the  mischievous  effects  of  this  vice, 
but  even  lessen  the  quantity  of  whoring  in  general,  and  reduce  it 
to  the  narrowest  bounds  which  it  can  possibly  be  contained  in." 
He  proposed  to  discourage  private  prostitution  by  giving  special 
privileges  and  immunities  to  brothels  by  Act  of  Parliament.  His 
scheme  involved  the  erection  of  one  hundred  brothels  in  a  special 
quarter  of  the  city,  to  contain  two  thousand  prostitutes  and  one 
hundred  matrons  of  ability  and  experience  with  physicians  and 
surgeons,  as  well  as  commissioners  to  oversee  the  whole.  Mande- 
ville was  regarded  merely  as  a  cynic  or  worse,  and  his  scheme  was 
ignored  or  treated  with  contempt.  It  was  left  to  the  genius  of 
Napoleon,  eighty  years  later,  to  establish  the  system  of  "maisons 
de  tolerance,"  which  had  so  great  an  influence  over  modern 
European  practice  during  a  large  part  of  the  last  century  and 
even  still  in  its  numerous  survivals  forms  the  subject  of  widely 
divergent  opinions. 

On  the  whole,  however,  it  must  be  said  that  the  system  of 
registering,  examining,  and  regularizing  prostitutes  now  belongs 


250  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   SEX. 

to  the  past.  Many  great  battles  have  been  fought  over  this 
question ;  the  most  important  is  that  which  raged  for  many  years 
in  England  over  the  Contagious  Diseases  Acts,  and  is  embodied  in 
the  600  pages  of  a  Eeport  by  a  Select  Committee  on  these  Acts 
issued  in  1882.  The  majority  of  the  members  of  the  Committee 
reported  favorably  to  the  Acts  which  were,  notwithstanding, 
repealed  in  1886,  since  which  date  no  serious  attempt  has  been 
made  in  England  to  establish  them  again. 

At  the  present  time,  although  the  old  system  still  stands  in 
many  countries  with  the  inert  stolidity  of  established  institutions, 
it  no  longer  commands  general  approval.  As  Paul  and  Victor 
Margueritte  have  truly  stated,  in  the  course  of  an  acute  examina- 
tion of  the  phenomena  of  state-regulated  prostitution  as  found 
in  Paris,  the  system  is  '^barbarous  to  start  with  and  almost 
inefficacious  as  well."  The  expert  is  every  day  more  clearly 
demonstrating  its  inefficacy  while  the  psychologist  and  the 
sociologist  are  constantly  becoming  more  convinced  that  it  is 
barbarous. 

It  can  indeed  by  no  means  be  said  that  any  unanimity  has 
been  attained.  It  is  obviously  so  urgently  necessary  to  combat 
the  flood  of  disease  and  misery  which  proceeds  directly  from  the 
spread  of  syphilis  and  gonorrhoea,  and  indirectly  from  the  pros- 
titution which  is  the  chief  propagator  of  these  diseases,  that  we 
cannot  be  surprised  that  many  should  eagerly  catch  at  any  system 
which  seems  to  promise  a  palliation  of  the  evils.  At  the  present 
time,  however,  it  is  those  best  acquainted  with  the  operation  of 
the  system  of  control  who  have  most  clearly  realized  that  the 
supposed  palliation  is  for  the  most  part  illusory,1  and  in  any 
case  attained  at  the  cost  of  the  artificial  production  of  other  evils. 
In  Prance,  where  the  system  of  the  registration  and  control  of 


1  The  example  of  Holland,  where  some  large  cities  have  adopted  the 
regulation  of  prostitution  and  others  have  not,  is  instructive  as  regards 
the  illusory  nature  of  the  advantages  of  regulation.  In  1883  Dr.  Despr§s 
brought  forward  figures,  supplied  by  Dutch  officials,  showing  that  in 
Rotterdam,  where  prostitution  was  regulated,  both  prostitution  and 
venereal  diseases  were  more  prevalent  than  in  Amsterdam,  a  city  with- 
out regulation  (A.  Despres,  La  Prostitution  en  France,  p.  122). 


PEOSTITUTION.  251 

prostitutes  has  been  established  for  over  a  century,1  and  where 
consequently  its  advantages,  if  such  there  are,  should  be  clearly 
realized,  it  meets  with  almost  impassioned  opposition  from  able 
men  belonging  to  every  section  of  the  community.  In  Germany 
the  opposition  to  regularized  control  has  long  been  led  by  well- 
equipped  experts,  headed  by  Blaschko  of  Berlin.  Precisely  the 
same  conclusions  are  being  reached  in  America.  Gottheil,  of 
New  York,  finds  that  the  municipal  control  of  prostitution  is 
"neither  successful  nor  desirable."  Heidingsfeld  concludes  that 
the  regulation  and  control  system  in  force  in  Cincinnati  has  done 
little  good  and  much  harm ;  under  the  system  among  the  private 
patients  in  his  own  clinic  the  proportion  of  cases  of  both  syphilis 
and  gonorrhoea  has  increased;  "suppression  of  prostitutes  is 
impossible  and  control  is  impracticable."2 

It  is  in  Germany  that  the  attempt  to  regulate  prostitution  still 
remains  most  persistent,  with  results  that  in  Germany  itself  are  regarded 
as  unfortunate.  Thus  the  German  law  inflicts  a  penalty  on  householders 
who  permit  illegitimate  sexual  intercourse  in  their  houses.  This  is 
meant  to  strike  the  unlicensed  prostitute,  but  it  really  encourages  pros- 
titution, for  a  decent  youth  and  girl  who  decide  to  form  a  relationship 
which  later  may  develop  into  marriage,  and  which  is  not  illegal  (for 
extra-marital  sexual  intercourse  per  se  is  not  in  Germany,  as  it  is  by  the 
antiquated  laws  of  several  American  States,  a  punishable  offense),  are 
subjected  to  so  much  trouble  and  annoyance  by  the  suspicious  police  that 
it  is  much  easier  for  the  girl  to  become  a  prostitute  and  put  herself  under 
the  protection  of  the  police.  The  law  was  largely  directed  against  those 
who  live  on  the  profits  of  prostitution.  But  in  practice  it  works  out  dif- 
ferently. The  prostitute  simply  has  to  pay  extravagantly  high  rents,  so 
that  her  landlord  really  lives  on  the  fruits  of  her  trade,  while  she  has 
to  carry  on  her  business  with  increased  activity  and  on  a  larger  scale 
in  order  to  cover  her  heavy  expenses  (P.  Hausmeister,  "Zur  Analyse  der 
Prostitution,"  Geschlecht  tend  Gesellschaft,  vol.  ii,  1907,  p.  294). 

In  Italy,  opinion  on  this  matter  is  much  divided.  The  regulation 
of  prostitution  has  been  successively  adopted,  abandoned,  and  readopted. 
In  Switzerland,  the  land  of  governmental  experiments,  various  plans  are 


1  It  was  in  1802  that  the  medical  inspection  of  prostitutes  in  Paris 
brothels  was  introduced,  though  not  until  1825  fully  established  and 
made  general. 

2  M.  L.  Heidingsfeld,  "The  Control  of  Prostitution,"  Journal  Ameri- 
can  Medical  Association,  January  30,  1904. 


252  PSYCHOLOGY   OF    SEX. 

tried  in  different  cantons.  In  some  there  is  no  attempt  to  interfere 
with  prostitution,  except  under  special  circumstances;  in  others  all 
prostitution,  and  even  fornication  generally,  is  punishable;  in  Geneva 
only  native  prostitutes  are  permitted  to  practice;  in  Zurich,  since  1897, 
prostitution  is  prohibited,  but  care  is  taken  to  put  no  difficulties  in  the 
path  of  free  sexual  relationships  which  are  not  for  gain.  With  these 
different  regulations,  morals  in  Switzerland  generally  are  said  to  be 
much  on  the  same  level  as  elsewhere  (Moreau-Christophe,  Du  Probleme 
de  la  Misere,  vol.  iii,  p.  259).  The  same  conclusion  holds  good  of  Lon- 
don. A  disinterested  observer,  Felix  Remo  (La  Vie  Galante  en  Angle- 
terre,  1888,  p.  237),  concluded  that,  notwithstanding  its  free  trade  in 
prostitution,  its  alcoholic  excesses,  its  vices  of  all  kinds,  "London  is  one 
of  the  most  moral  capitals  in  Europe."  The  movement  towards  freedom 
in  this  matter  has  been  evidenced  in  recent  years  by  the  abandonment  of 
the  system  of  regulation  by  Denmark  in  1906. 

Even  the  most  ardent  advocates  of  the  registration  of  pros- 
titutes recognize  that  not  only  is  the  tendency  of  civilization 
opposed  rather  than  favorable  to  the  system,  but  that  in  the 
numerous  countries  where  the  system  persists  registered  prosti- 
tutes are  losing  ground  in  the  struggle  against  clandestine 
prostitutes.  Even  in  France,  the  classic  land  of  police-con- 
trolled prostitutes,  the  "maisons .  de  tolerance"  have  long  been 
steadily  decreasing  in  number,  by  no  means  because  prostitution 
is  decreasing  but  because  low-class  brasseries  and  small  cafes- 
chantants,  which  are  really  unlicensed  brothels,  are  taking  their 
place.1 

The  wholesale  regularization  of  prostitution  in  civilized 
centres  is  nowadays,  indeed,  advocated  by  few,  if  any,  of  the 
authorities  who  belong  to  the  newer  school.  It  is  at  most  claimed 
as  desirable  in  certain  places  under  special  circumstances.2 
Even  those  who  would  still  be  glad  to  see  prostitution  thoroughly 


1  See,  e.g.,  G.  Berault,  La  Maison  de  Tolerance,  These  de  Paris, 
1904. 

2  Thus  the  circumstances  of  the  English  army  in  India  are  of  a 
special  character.  A  number  of  statements  (from  the  reports  of  com- 
mittees, official  publications,  etc.)  regarding  the  good  influence  of 
regulation  in  reducing  venereal  diseases  in  India  are  brought  together 
by  Surgeon-Colonel  F.  H.  Welch,  "The  Prevention  of  Syphilis,"  Lancet, 
August  12,  1899.  The  system  has  been  abolished,  but  only  as  the  result 
of  a  popular  outcry  and  not  on  the  question  of  its  merits. 


PROSTITUTION.  253 

in  the  control  of  the  police  now  recognize  that  experience  shows 
this  to  be  impossible.  As  many  girls  begin  their  career  as  pros- 
titutes at  a  very  early  age,  a  sound  system  of  regulation  should  be 
prepared  to  enroll  as  permanent  prostitutes  even  girls  who  are 
little  more  than  children.  That,  however,  is  a  logical  conclusion 
against  which  the  moral  sense,  and  even  the  common  sense,  of  a 
community  instinctively  revolts.  In  Paris  girls  may  not  be 
inscribed  as  prostitutes  until  they  have  reached  the  age  of  sixteen 
and  some  consider  even  that  age  too  low.1  Moreover,  whenever 
she  becomes  diseased,  or  grows  tired  of  her  position,  the  registered 
woman  may  always  slip  out  of  the  hands  of  the  police  and  estab- 
lish herself  elswhere  as  a  clandestine  prostitute.  Every  rigid 
attempt  to  keep  prostitution  within  the  police  ring  leads  to 
offensive  interference  with  the  actions  and  the  freedom  of  respect- 
able women  which  cannot  fail  to  be  intolerable  in  any  free  com- 
munity. Even  in  a  city  like  London,  where  prostitution  is 
relatively  free,  the  supervision  of  the  police  has  led  to  scandalous 
police  charges  against  women  who  have  done  nothing  whatever 
which  should  legitimately  arouse  suspicion  of  their  behavior. 
The  escape  of  the  infected  woman  from  the  police  cordon  has,  it  is 
obvious,  an  effect  in  raising  the  apparent  level  of  health  of 
registered  women,  and  the  police  statistics  are  still  further 
fallaciously  improved  by  the  fact  that  the  inmates  of  brothels  are 
older  on  the  average  than  clandestine  prostitutes  and  have  become 
immune  to  disease.2  These  facts  are  now  becoming  fairly 
obvious  and  well  recognized.     The  state  regulation  of  prostitu- 


1  Thus  Richard,  who  accepts  regulation  and  was  instructed  to 
report  on  it  for  the  Paris  Municipal  Council,  would  not  have  girls 
inscribed  as  professional  prostitutes  until  they  are  of  age  and  able  to 
realize  what  they  are  binding  themselves  to  (E.  Richard,  La  Prostitu- 
tion a  Paris,  p.  147).  But  at  that  age  a  large  proportion  of  prostitutes 
have  been  practicing  their  profession  for  years. 

2  In  Germany,  where  the  cure  of  infected  prostitutes  under  regula- 
tion is  nearly  everywhere  compulsory,  usually  at  the  cost  of  the  com- 
munity, it  is  found  that  18  is  the  average  age  at  which  they  are  affected 
by  syphilis;  the  average  age  of  prostitutes  in  brothels  is  higher  than 
that  of  those  outside,  and  a  much  larger  proportion  have  therefore  become 
immune  to  disease  (Blaschko,  "Hygiene  der  Syphilis,"  in  WeyPs  Hand- 
huch  der  Hygiene,  Bd.  ii,  p.  62,  1900 ) . 


254  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   SEX. 

tion  is  "undesirable,  on  moral  grounds  for  the  oft-emphasized 
reason  that  it  is  only  applied  to  one  sex,  and  on  practical  grounds 
because  it  is  ineffective.  Society  allows  the  police  to  harass  the 
prostitute  with  petty  persecutions  under  the  guise  of  charges  of 
"solicitation,"  "disorderly  conduct,"  etc.,  but  it  is  no  longer  con- 
vinced that  she  ought  to  be  under  the  absolute  control  of  the 
police. 

The  problem  of  prostitution,  when  we  look  at  it  narrowly, 
seems  to  be  in  the  same  position  to-day  as  at  any  time  in  the 
course  of  the  past  three  thousand  years.  In  order,  however,  to 
comprehend  the  real  significance  of  prostitution,  and  to  attain  a 
reasonable  attitude  towards  it,  we  must  look  at  it  from  a  broader 
point  of  view ;  we  must  consider  not  only  its  evolution  and  his- 
tory, but  its  causes  and  its  relation  to  the  wider  aspects  of  modern 
social  life.  When  we  thus  view  the  problem  from  a  broader 
standpoint  we  shall  find  that  there  is  no  conflict  between  the 
claims  of  ethics  and  those  of  social  hygiene,  and  that  the  co- 
ordinated activity  of  both  is  involved  in  the  progressive  refine- 
ment and  purification  of  civilized  sexual  relationships. 

III.     The  Causes  of  Prostitution. 

The  history  of  the  rise  and  development  of  prostitution 
enables  us  to  see  that  prostitution  is  not  an  accident  of  our 
marriage  system,  but  an  essential  constituent  which  appears  con- 
currently with  its  other  essential  constituents.  The  gradual 
development  of  the  family  on  a  patriarchal  and  largely  mono- 
gamic  basis  rendered  it  more  and  more  difficult  for  a  woman  to 
dispose  of  her  own  person.  She  belongs  in  the  first  place  to  her 
father,  whose  interest  it  was  to  guard  her  carefully  until  a 
husband  appeared  who  could  afford  to  purchase  her.  In 
the  enhancement  of  her  value  the  new  idea  of  the  market  value 
of  virginity  gradually  developed,  and  where  a  "virgin"  had 
previously  meant  a  woman  who  was  free  to  do  as  she  would  with 
her  own  body  its  meaning  was  now  reversed  and  it  came  to  mean 
a  woman  who  was  precluded  from  having  intercourse  with  men. 
When  she  was  transferred  from  her  father  to  a  husband,  she 


PROSTITUTION".  255 

was  still  guarded  with  the  same  care;  husband  and  father  alike 
found  their  interest  in  preserving  their  women  from  unmarried 
men.  The  situation  thus  produced  resulted  in  the  existence  of  a 
large  body  of  young  men  who  were  not  yet  rich  enough  to  obtain 
wives,  and  a  large  number  of  young  women,  not  yet  chosen  as 
wives,  and  many  of  whom  could  never  expect  to  become  wives. 
At  such  a  point  in  social  evolution  prostitution  is  clearly 
inevitable;  it  is  not  so  much  the  indispensable  concomitant  of 
marriage  as  an  essential  part  of  the  whole  system.  Some  of 
the  superfluous  or  neglected  women,  utilizing  their  money  value 
and  perhaps  at  the  same  time  reviving  traditions  of  an  earlier 
freedom,  find  their  social  function  in  selling  their  favors  to 
gratify  the  temporary  desires  of  the  men  who  have  not  yet  been 
able  to  acquire  wives.  Thus  every  link  in  the  chain  of  the 
marriage  system  is  firmly  welded  and  the  complete  circle  formed. 

But  while  the  history  of  the  rise  and  development  of  prosti- 
tution shows  us  how  indestructible  and  essential  an  element 
prostitution  is  of  the  marriage  system  which  has  long  prevailed  in 
Europe — under  very  varied  racial,  political,  social,  and  religious 
conditions — it  yet  fails  to  supply  us  in  every  respect  with  the  data 
necessary  to  reach  a  definite  attitude  towards  prostitution  to-day. 
In  order  to  understand  the  place  of  prostitution  in  our  existing 
system,  it  is  necessary  that  we  should  analyze  the  chief  factors  of 
prostitution.  We  may  most  conveniently  learn  to  understand 
these  if  we  consider  prostitution,  in  order,  under  four  aspects. 
These  are:  (1)  economic  necessity;  (2)  biological  predisposi- 
tion; (3)  moral  advantages;  and  (4)  what  may  be  called  its 
civilizational  value. 

While  these  four  factors  of  prostitution  seem  to  me  those 
that  here  chiefly  concern  us,  it  is  scarcely  necessary  to  point  out 
that  many  other  causes  contribute  to  produce  and  modify  prosti- 
tution. Prostitutes  themselves  often  seek  to  lead  other  girls  to 
adopt  the  same  paths;  recruits  must  be  found  for  brothels, 
whence  we  have  the  "white  slave  trade,"  which  is  now  being 
energetically  combated  in  many  parts  of  the  world ;  while  all  the 
forms  of  seduction  towards  this  life  are  favored  and  often  pre- 
disposed to  by  alcoholism.     It  will  generally  be  found  that  several 


256  PSYCHOLOGY    OP    SEX. 

causes  have  combined  to  push  a  girl  into  the  career  of  prosti- 
tution. 

The  ways  in  which  various  factors  of  environment  and  suggestion 
unite  to  lead  a  girl  into  the  paths  of  prostitution  are  indicated  in  the 
following  statement  in  which  a  correspondent  has  set  forth  his  own  con- 
clusions on  this  matter  as  a  man  of  the  world:  "I  have  had  a  some- 
what varied  experience  among  loose  women,  and  can  say,  without 
hesitation,  that  not  more  than  1  per  cent,  of  the  women  I  have  known 
could  be  regarded  as  educated.  This  indicates  that  almost  invariably 
they  are  of  humble  origin,  and  the  terrible  cases  of  overcrowding  that 
are  daily  brought  to  light  suggest  that  at  very  early  ages  the  sense  of 
modesty  becomes  extinct,  and  long  before  puberty  a  familiarity  with 
things  sexual  takes  place.  As  soon  as  they  are  old  enough  these  girls 
are  seduced  by  their  sweethearts ;  the  familiarity  with  which  they  regard 
sexual  matters  removes  the  restraint  which  surrounds  a  girl  whose  early 
life  has  been  spent  in  decent  surroundings.  Later  they  go  to  work  in 
factories  and  shops;  if  pretty  and  attractive,  they  consort  with  man- 
agers and  foremen.  Then  the  love  of  finery,  which  forms  so  large  a  part 
of  the  feminine  character,  tempts  the  girl  to  become  the  'kept'  woman 
of  some  man  of  means.  A  remarkable  thing  in  this  connection  is  the 
fact  that  they  rarely  enjoy  excitement  with  their  protectors,  preferring 
rather  the  coarser  embraces  of  some  man  nearer  their  own  station  in 
life,  very  often  a  soldier.  I  have  not  known  many  women  who  were 
seduced  and  deserted,  though  this  is  a  fiction  much  affected  by  prosti- 
tutes. Barmaids  supply  a  considerable  number  to  the  ranks  of  prostitu- 
tion, largely  on  account  of  their  addiction  to  drink;  drunkenness 
invariably  leads  to  laxness  of  moral  restraint  in  women.  Another 
potent  factor  in  the  production  of  prostitutes  lies  in  the  flare  of  finery 
flaunted  by  some  friend  who  has  adopted  the  life.  A  girl,  working  hard 
to  live,  sees  some  friend,  perhaps  making  a  call  in  the  street  where  the 
hard-working  girl  lives,  clothed  in  finery,  while  she  herself  can  hardly 
get  enough  to  eat.  She  has  a  conversation  with  her  finely-clad  friend 
who  tells  her  how  easily  she  can  earn  money,  explaining  what  a  vital 
asset  the  sexual  organs  are,  and  soon  another  one  is  added  to  the  ranks." 

There  is  some  interest  in  considering  the  reasons  assigned  for 
prostitutes  entering  their  career.  In  some  countries  this  has  been  esti- 
mated by  those  who  come  closely  into  official  or  other  contact  with 
prostitutes.  In  other  countries,  it  is  the  rule  for  girls,  before  they  are 
registered  as  prostitutes,  to  state  the  reasons  for  which  they  desire  to 
enter  the  career. 

Parent-Duchatelet,  whose  work  on  prostitutes  in  Paris  is  still  an 
authority,  presented  the  first  estimate  of  this  kind.  He  found  that  of 
over  five  thousand  prostitutes,  1441  were  influenced  by  poverty,  1425  by 


PROSTITUTION.  257 

seduction  of  lovers  who  had  abandoned  them,  1255  by  the  loss  of  parents 
from  death  or  other  cause.  By  such  an  estimate,  nearly  the  whole  num- 
ber are  accounted  for  by  wretchedness,  that  is  by  economic  causes,  alone 
(Parent-Duchatelet,  De  la  Prostitution,  1857,  vol.  i,  p.  107). 

In  Brussels  during  a  period  of  twenty  years  (1865-1884)  3505 
women  were  inscribed  as  prostitutes.  The  causes  they  assigned  for 
desiring  to  take  to  this  career  present  a  different  picture  from  that 
shown  by  Parent-Duchatelet,  but  perhaps  a  more  reliable  one,  although 
there  are  some  marked  and  curious  discrepancies.  Out  of  the  3505,  1523 
explained  that  extreme  poverty  was  the  cause  of  their  degradation; 
1118  frankly  confessed  that  their  sexual  passions  were  the  cause;  420 
attributed  their  fall  to  evil  company;  316  said  they  were  disgusted  and 
weary  of  their  work,  because  the  toil  was  so  arduous  and  the  pay  so 
small;  101  had  been  abandoned  by  their  lovers;  10  had  quarrelled  with 
their  parents;  7  were  abandoned  by  their  husbands;  4  did  not  agree 
with  their  guardians;  3  had  family  quarrels;  2  were  compelled  to 
prostitute  themselves  by  their  husbands,  and  1  by  her  parents  (Lancet, 
June  28,  1890,  p.  1442). 

In  London,  Merrick  found  that  of  16,022  prostitutes  who  passed 
through  his  hands  during  the  years  he  was  chaplain  at  Millbank  prison, 
5061  voluntarily  left  home  or  situation  for  "a  life  of  pleasure;"  3363 
assigned  poverty  as  the  cause;  3154  were  "seduced"  and  drifted  on  to 
the  street;  1636  were  betrayed  by  promises  of  marriage  and  abandoned 
by  lover  and  relations.  On  the  whole,  Merrick  states,  4790,  or  nearly 
one-third  of  the  whole  number,  may  be  said  to  owe  the  adoption  of  their 
career  directly  to  men,  11,232  to  other  causes.  He  adds  that  of  those 
pleading  poverty  a  large  number  were  indolent  and  incapable  (G.  P. 
Merrick,  Work  Among  the  Fallen,  p.  38). 

Logan,  an  English  city  missionary  with  an  extensive  acquaintance 
with  prostitutes,  divided  them  into  the  following  groups :  ( 1 )  One- 
fourth  of  the  girls  are  servants,  especially  in  public  houses,  beer  shops, 
etc.,  and  thus  led  into  the  life;  (2)  one-fourth  come  from  factories, 
etc.;  (3)  nearly  one-fourth  are  recruited  by  procuresses  who  visit  coun- 
try towns,  markets,  etc.;  (4)  a  final  group  includes,  on  the  one  hand, 
those  who  are  induced  to  become  prostitutes  by  destitution,  or  indolence, 
or  a  bad  temper,  which  unfits  them  for  ordinary  avocations,  and,  on  the 
other  hand,  those  who  have  been  seduced  by  a  false  promise  of  marriage 
(W.  Logan,  The  Great  Social  Evil,  1871,  p.  53). 

In  America  Sanger  has  reported  the  results  of  inquiries  made  of 
two  thousand  New  York  prostitutes  as  to  the  causes  which  induced  them 
to  take  up  their  avocation: 


258  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

Destitution    525 

Inclination 513 

Seduced  and  abandoned   258 

Drink  and  desire  for  drink   181 

Ill-treatment  by  parents,  relations,  or  husbands.  164 

As  an  easy  life    124 

Bad  company    84 

Persuaded  by  prostitutes  71 

Too  idle  to  work 29 

Violated  27 

Seduced  on  emigrant  ship   16 

Seduced  in  emigrant  boarding  homes 8 


2,000 
(Sanger,  History  of  Prostitution,  p.  488.) 

In  America,  again,  more  recently,  Professor  Woods  Hutchinson  put 
himself  into  communication  with  some  thirty  representative  men  in 
various  great  metropolitan  centres,  and  thus  summarizes  the  answers  as 
regards  the  etiology  of  prostitution: 

Per  cent. 

Love  of  display,  luxury  and  idleness 42.1 

Bad  family  surroundings 23.8 

Seduction  in  which  they  were  innocent  victims.      11.3 

Lack  of  employment   9.4 

Heredity  7.8 

Primary  sexual  appetite  5.6 

(Woods  Hutchinson,  "The  Economies  of  Prostitution,"  American 
Gyncecologio  and  Obstetric  Journal,  September,  1895;  Id.,  The  Gospel 
According  to  Darwin,  p.  194.) 

In  Italy,  in  1881,  among  10,422  inscribed  prostitutes  from  the  age 
of  seventeen  upwards,  the  causes  of  prostitution  were  classified  as  fol- 
lows: 

Vice  and  depravity  2,752 

Death  of  parents,  husband,  etc 2,139 

Seduction  by  lover    1,653 

Seduction  by  employer  927 

Abandoned  by  parents,  husband,  etc 794 

Love  of  luxury  698 

Incitement   by   lover   or   other   persons   outside 

family 666 

Incitement  by  parents  or  husband 400 

To  support  parents  or  children   393 

(Ferriani,  Minor enni  Delinquenti,  p.  193.) 


PROSTITUTION.  259 

The  reasons  assigned  by  Russian  prostitutes  for  taking  up  their 
career  are  (according  to  Federow)  as  follows: 
38.5  per  cent,  insufficient  wages. 


21.       "       ' 

'       desire  for  amusement. 

14.       "       ' 

'       loss  of  place. 

9.5     "       ' 

'       persuasion  by  women  friends 

6.5     "       ' 

'       loss  of  habit  of  work. 

5.5     "       « 

'       chagrin,  and  to  punish  lover. 

.5     "       ' 

'       drunkenness. 

(Summarized  in  Archives  d' Anthropologic  Criminelle,  Nov.  15,  1901.) 

1.  The  Economic  Causation  of  Prostitution. — Writers  on 
prostitution  frequently  assert  that  economic  conditions  lie  at 
the  root  of  prostitution  and  that  its  chief  cause  is  poverty,  while 
prostitutes  themselves  often  declare  that  the  difficulty  of  earning 
a  livelihood  in  other  ways  was  a  main  cause  in  inducing  them 
to  adopt  this  career.  "Of  all  the  causes  of  prostitution/'  Parent- 
Duchatelet  wrote  a  century  ago,  "particularly  in  Paris,  and 
probably  in  all  large  cities,  none  is  more  active  than  lack  of  work 
and  the  misery  which  is  the  inevitable  result  of  insufficient 
wages."  In  England,  also,  to  a  large  extent,  Sherwell  states, 
"morals  fluctuate  with  trade."1  It  is  equally  so  in  Berlin  where 
the  number  of  registered  prostitutes  increases  during  bad  years.2 
It  is  so  also  in  America.  It  is  the  same  in  Japan;  "the  cause 
of  causes  is  poverty."3 

Thus  the  broad  and  general  statement  that  prostitution  is 
largely  or  mainly  an  economic  phenomenon,  due  to  the  low  wages 
of  women  or  to  sudden  depressions  in  trade,  is  everywhere  made 
by  investigators.  It  must,  however,  be  added  that  these  general 
statements  are  considerably  qualified  in  the  light  of  the  detailed 
investigations  made  by  careful  inquirers.  Thus  Strohmberg, 
who  minutely  investigated  462  prostitutes,  found  that  only  one 
assigned  destitution  as  the  reason  for  adopting  her  career,  and  on 
investigation  this  was  found  to  be  an  impudent  lie.4     Hammer 

1  A.  Sherwell,  Life  in  West  London,  1897,  Ch.  V. 

2  Bonger  brings  together  statistics  illustrating  this  point,  op.  cit., 
pp.  402-6. 

3  The  Sightless  City,  p.  125. 

4  Strohmberg,  as  quoted  by  Aschaffenburg,  Das  Verbrechen,  1903, 
p.  77. 


260  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

found  that  of  ninety  registered  German  prostitutes  not  one  had 
entered  on  the  career  out  of  want  or  to  support  a  child,  while  some 
went  on  the  street  while  in  the  possession  of  money,  or  without 
wishing  to  be  paid.1  Pastor  Buschmann,  of  the  Teltow  Mag- 
dalene Home  in  Berlin,  finds  that  it  is  not  want  but  indifference 
to  moral  considerations  which  leads  girls  to  become  prostitutes. 
In  Germany,  before  a  girl  is  put  on  the  police  register,  due  care  is 
always  taken  to  give  her  a  chance  of  entering  a  Home  and  getting 
work;  in  Berlin,  in  the  course  of  ten  years,  only  two  girls — out 
of  thousands — were  willing  to  take  advantage  of  this  opportunity. 
The  difficulty  experienced  by  English  Rescue  Homes  in  finding 
girls  who  are  willing  to  be  "rescued"  is  notorious.  The  same 
difficulty  is  found  in  other  cities,  even  where  entirely  different 
conditions  prevail;  thus  it  is  found  in  Madrid,  according  to 
Bernaldo  de  Quiros  and  Lianas  Aguilaniedo,  that  the  prostitutes 
who  enter  the  Homes,  notwithstanding  all  the  devotion  of  the 
nuns,  on  leaving  at  once  return  to  their  old  life.  While  the 
economic  factor  in  prostitution  undoubtedly  exists,  the  undue 
frequency  and  emphasis  with  which  it  is  put  forward  and  accepted 
is  clearly  due,  in  part  to  ignorance  of  the  real  facts,  in  part  to  the 
fact  that  such  an  assumption  appeals  to  those  whose  weakness  it 
is  to  explain  all  social  phenomena  by  economic  causes,  and  in  part 
to  its  obvious  plausibility.2 

Prostitutes  are  mainly  recruited  from  the  ranks  of  factory 
girls,  domestic  servants,  shop  girls,  and  waitresses.     In  some 


1  Monatsschrift  fur  EarnkranJcheiten  und  Sexuelle  Hygiene,  1906. 
Heft  10,  p.  460.  But  this  cause  is  undoubtedly  effective  in  some  eases 
of  unmarried  women  in  Germany  unable  to  get  work  (see  article  by  Sis- 
ter Henrietta  Arendt,  Police-Assistant  at  Stuttgart,  Sexual-Probleme, 
December,  1908). 

2  Thus,  for  instance,  we  find  Irma  von  Troll-Borostyani  saying  in 
her  book,  Im  Freien  Reich  (p.  176)  :  "Go  and  ask  these  unfortunate 
creatures  if  they  willingly  and  freely  devoted  themselves  to  vice.  And 
nearly  all  of  them  will  tell  you  a  story  of  need  and  destitution,  of  hunger 
and  lack  of  work,  which  compelled  them  to  it,  or  else  of  love  and  seduc- 
tion and  the  fear  of  the  discovery  of  their  false  step  which  drove  them 
out  of  their  homes,  helpless  and  forsaken,  into  the  pool  of  vice  from 
which  there  is  hardly  any  salvation."  It  is,  of  course,  quite  true  that 
the  prostitute  is  frequently  ready  to  tell  such  stories  to  philanthropic 
persons  who  expect  to  hear  them,  and  sometimes  even  put  the  words  into 
her  mouth. 


PROSTITUTION.  261 

of  these  occupations  it  is  difficult  to  obtain  employment  all  the 
year  round.  In  this  way  many  milliners,  dressmakers  and 
tailoresses  become  prostitutes  when  business  is  slack,  and  return  to 
business  when  the  season  begins.  Sometimes  the  regular  work  of 
the  day  is  supplemented  concurrently  by  prostitution  in  the  street 
in  the  evening.  It  is  said,  possibly  with  some  truth,  that  amateur 
prostitution  of  this  kind  is  extremely  prevalent  in  England,  as  it 
is  not  checked  by  the  precautions  which,  in  countries  where  prosti- 
tution is  regulated,  the  clandestine  prostitute  must  adopt  in  order 
to  avoid  registration.  Certain  public  lavatories  and  dressing- 
rooms  in  central  London  are  said  to  be  used  by  the  girls  for 
putting  on,  and  finally  washing  off  before  going  home,  the 
customary  paint.1  It  is  certain  that  in  England  a  large  propor- 
tion of  parents  belonging  to  the  working  and  even  lower  middle 
class  ranks  are  unacquainted  with  the  nature  of  the  lives  led  by 
their  own  daughters.  It  must  be  added,  also,  that  occasionally 
this  conduct  of  the  daughter  is  winked  at  or  encouraged  by  the 
parents ;  thus  a  correspondent  writes  that  he  "knows  some  towns 
in  England  where  prostitution  is  not  regarded  as  anything  dis- 
graceful, and  can  remember  many  cases  where  the  mother's  house 
has  been  used  by  the  daughter  with  the  mother's  knowledge." 

Acton,  in  a  well-informed  book  on  London  prostitution, 
written  in  the  middle  of  the  last  century,  said  that  prostitution  is 
"a  transitory  stage,  through  which  an  untold  number  of  British 
women  are  ever  on  their  passage."2  This  statement  was  stren- 
uously denied  at  the  time  by  many  earnest  moralists  who  refused 
to  admit  that  it  was  possible  for  a  woman  who  had  sunk  into  so 
deep  a  pit  of  degradation  ever  to  climb  out  again,  respectably  safe 
and  sound.  Yet  it  is  certainly  true  as  regards  a  considerable 
proportion  of  women,  not  only  in  England,  but  in  other  countries 
also.  Thus  Parent-Duchatelet,  the  greatest  authority  on  French 
prostitution,  stated  that  "prostitution  is  for  the  majority  only  a 
transitory  stage ;  it  is  quitted  usually  during  the  first  year ;  very 

i  C.  Booth,  Life  and  Labour,  final  volume,  p.  125.  Similarly  in 
Sweden,  Kullberg  states  that  girls  of  thirteen  to  seventeen,  living  at 
home  with  their  parents  in  comfortable  circumstances,  have  often  been 
found  on  the  streets. 

2W.  Acton,  Prostitution,  1870,  pp.  39,  49. 


262  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   SEX. 

few  prostitutes  continue  until  extinction."  It  is  difficult,  how- 
ever, to  ascertain  precisely  of  how  large  a  proportion  this  is  true ; 
there  are  no  data  which  would  serve  as  a  basis  for  exact  estima- 
tion,1 and  it  is  impossible  to  expect  that  respectable  married 
women  would  admit  that  they  had  ever  been  "on  the  streets"; 
they  would  not,  perhaps,  always  admit  it  even  to  themselves. 

The  following  case,  though  noted  down  over  twenty  years  ago,  is 
fairly  typical  of  a  certain  class,  among  the  lower  ranks  of  prostitution, 
in  which  the  economic  factor  counts  for  much,  but  in  which  we  ought 
not  too  hastily  to  assume  that  it  is  the  sole  factor. 

Widow,  aged  thirty,  with  two  children.  Works  in  an  umbrella 
manufactory  in  the  East  End  of  London,  earning  eighteen  shillings  a 
week  by  hard  work,  and  increasing  her  income  by  occasionally  going  out 
on  the  streets  in  the  evenings.  She  haunts  a  quiet  side  street  which  is 
one  of  the  approaches  to  a  large  city  railway  terminus.  She  is  a  com- 
fortable, almost  matronly-looking  woman,  quietly  dressed  in  a  way  that 
is  only  noticeable  from  the  skirts  being  rather  short.  If  spoken  to  she 
may  remark  that  she  is  "waiting  for  a  lady  friend,"  talks  in  an  affected 
way  about  the  weather,  and  parenthetically  introduces  her  offers.  She 
will  either  lead  a  man  into  one  of  the  silent  neighboring  lanes  filled  with 
warehouses,  or  will  take  him  home  with  her.  She  is  willing  to  accept 
any  sum  the  man  may  be  willing  or  able  to  give;  occasionally  it  is  a 
sovereign,  sometimes  it  is  only  a  sixpence;  on  an  average  she  earns  a 
few  shillings  in  an  evening.  She  had  only  been  in  London  for  ten 
months;  before  that  she  lived  in  Newcastle.  She  did  not  go  on  the 
streets  there;    "circumstances  alter  eases,"  she  sagely  remarks.     Though 

lln  Lyons,  according  to  Potton,  of  3884  prostitutes,  3194  aban- 
doned, or  apparently  abandoned,  their  profession ;  in  Paris  a  very  large 
number  became  servauts,  dressmakers,  or  tailoresses,  occupations  which, 
in  many  eases,  doubtless,  they  had  exercised  before  (Parent-Duchatelet, 
De  la  Prostitution,  1857,  vol.  i,  p.  584;  vol.  ii,  p.  451).'  Sloggett  (quoted 
by  Acton)  stated  that  at  Davenport.  250  of  the  1775  prostitutes  there 
married.  It  is  well  known  that  prostitutes  occasionally  marry  extremely 
well.  It  was  remarked  nearly  a  century  ago  that  marriages  of  prosti- 
tutes to  rich  men  were  especially  frequent  in  England,  and  usually  turned 
out  well;  the  same  seems  to  be  true  still.  In  their  own  social  rank  they 
not  infrequently  marry  cabmen  and  policemen,  the  two  classes  of  men 
with  whom  they  are  brought  most  closely  in  contact  in  the  streets.  As 
regards  Germany,  C.  K.  Schneider  (Die  Prostituirte  und  die  G-esell- 
schaft),  states  that  young  prostitutes  take  up  all  sorts  of  occupations 
and  situations,  sometimes,  if  they  have  saved  a  little  money,  establishing 
a  business,  while  old  prostitutes  become  procuresses,  brothel -keepers, 
lavatory  women,  and  so  on.  Not  a  few  prostitutes  marry,  he  adds,  but 
the  proportion  among  inscribed  German  prostitutes  is  very  small,  less 
than  2  per  cent. 


PROSTITUTION.  263 

not  speaking  well  of  the  police,  she  says  they  do  not  interfere  with  her 
as  they  do  with  some  of  the  girls.  She  never  gives  them  money,  but 
hints  that  it  is  sometimes  necessary  to  gratify  their  desires  in  order  to 
keep  on  good  terms  with  them. 

It  must  always  be  remembered,  for  it  is  sometimes  forgotten 
by  socialists  and  social  reformers,  that  while  the  pressure  of 
poverty  exerts  a  markedly  modifying  influence  on  prostitution,  in 
that  it  increases  the  ranks  of  the  women  who  thereby  seek  a 
livelihood  and  may  thus  be  properly  regarded  as  a  factor  of 
prostitution,  no  practicable  raising  of  the  rate  of  women's  wages 
could  possibly  serve,  directly  and  alone,  to  abolish  prostitution. 
De  Molinari,  an  economist,  after  remarking  that  "prostitution  is 
an  industry"  and  that  if  other  competing  industries  can  offer 
women  sufficiently  high  pecuniary  inducements  they  will  not  be 
so  frequently  attracted  to  prostitution,  proceeds  to  point  out  that 
that  by  no  means  settles  the  question.  "Like  every  other  industry 
prostitution  is  governed  by  the  demand  of  the  need  to  which  it 
responds.  As  long  as  that  need  and  that  demand  persist,  they 
will  provoke  an  offer.  It  is  the  need  and  the  demand  that  we 
must  act  on,  and  perhaps  science  will  furnish  us  the  means  to  do 
so."1  In  what  way  Molinari  expects  science  to  diminish  the 
demand  for  prostitutes,  however,  is  not  clearly  brought  out. 

Not  only  have  we  to  admit  that  no  practicable  rise  in  the 
rate  of  wages  paid  to  women  in  ordinary  industries  can  possibly 
compete  with  the  wages  which  fairly  attractive  women  of  quite 
ordinary  ability  can  earn  by  prostitution,2  but  we  have  also  to 
realize  that  a  rise  in  general  prosperity — which  alone  can  render 
a  rise  of  women's  wages  healthy  and  normal — involves  a  rise  in 
the  wages  of  prostitution,  and  an  increase  in  the  number  of 
prostitutes.  So  that  if  good  wages  is  to  be  regarded  as  the 
antagonist  of  prostitution,  we  can  only  say  that  it  more  than 


1  G.  de  Molinari,  La  Viriculture,  1897,  p.  155. 

2  Reuss  and  other  writers  have  reproduced  typical  extracts  from 
the  private  account  books  of  prostitutes,  showing  the  high  rate  of  their 
earnings.  Even  in  the  common  brothels,  in  Philadelphia  (according  to 
Goodchild,  "The  Social  Evil  in  Philadelphia."  Arena,  March,  1896),  girls 
earn  twenty  dollars  or  more  a  week,  which  is  far  more  than  they  could 
earn  in  any  other  occupation  open  to  them. 


264  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   SEX. 

gives  back  with  one  hand  what  it  takes  with  the  other.  To  so 
marked  a  degree  is  this  the  case  that  Despres  in  a  detailed  moral 
and  demographic  study  of  the  distribution  of  prostitution  in 
France  comes  to  the  conclusion  that  we  must  reverse  the  ancient 
doctrine  that  "poverty  engenders  prostitution"  since  prostitution 
regularly  increases  with  wealth,1  and  as  a  departement  rises  in 
wealth  and  prosperity,  so  the  number  both  of  its  inscribed  and  its 
free  prostitutes  rises  also.  There  is  indeed  a  fallacy  here,  for 
while  it  is  true,  as  Despres  argues,  that  wealth  demands  prostitu- 
tion, it  is  also  true  that  a  wealthy  community  involves  the  extreme 
of  poverty  as  well  as  of  riches  and  that  it  is  among  the  poorer 
elements  that  prostitution  chiefly  finds  its  recruits.  The  ancient 
dictum  that  "poverty  engenders  prostitution"  still  stands,  but  it 
is  complicated  and  qualified  by  the  complex  conditions  of  civiliza- 
tion. Bonger,  in  his  able  discussion  of  the  economic  side  of  the 
question,  has  realized  the  wide  and  deep  basis  of  prostitution 
when  he  reaches  the  conclusion  that  it  is  "on  the  one  hand  the 
inevitable  complement  of  the  existing  legal  monogamy,  and  on 
the  other  hand  the  result  of  the  bad  conditions  in  which  many 
young  girls  grow  up,  the  result  of  the  physical  and  psychical 
wretchedness  in  which  the  women  of  the  people  live,  and  the 
consequence  also  of  the  inferior  position  of  women  in  our  actual 
society."2  A  narrowly  economic  consideration  of  prostitution 
can  by  no  means  bring  us  to  the  root  of  the  matter. 

One  circumstance  alone  should  have  sufficed  to  indicate  that  the 
inability  of  many  women  to  secure  "a  living  wage,"  is  far  from  being 
the  most  fundamental  cause  of  prostitution:  a  large  proportion  of 
prostitutes  come  from  the  ranks  of  domestic  service.  Of  all  the  great 
groups  of  female  workers,  domestic  servants  are  the  freest  from  economic 
anxieties;  they  do  not  pay  for  food  or  for  lodging;  they  often  live  as 
well  as  their  mistresses,  and  in  a  large  proportion  of  cases  they  have 
fewer  money  anxieties  than  their  mistresses.  Moreover,  they  supply  an 
almost  universal  demand,  so  that  there  is  never  any  need  for  even  very 
moderately  competent  servants  to  be  in  want  of  work.  They  constitute, 
it  is  true,  a  very  large  body  which  could  not  fail  to  supply  a  certain 
contingent  of  recruits  to  prostitution.     But  when  we  see  that  domestic 


1  A.  Despr6s,  La  Prostitution  en  France,  1883. 

2  Bonger,  Criminalite  et  Conditions  Economiques,  1905,  pp.  378-414. 


PROSTITUTION".  265 

service  is  the  chief  reservoir  from  which  prostitutes  are  drawn,  it  should 
be  clear  that  the  craving  for  food  and  shelter  is  by  no  means  the  chief 
cause  of  prostitution. 

It  may  be  added  that,  although  the  significance  of  this  predomi- 
nance of  servants  among  prostitutes  is  seldom  realized  by  those  who 
fancy  that  to  remove  poverty  is  to  abolish  prostitution,  it  has  not  been 
ignored  by  the  more  thoughtful  students  of  social  questions.  Thus  Sher- 
well,  while  pointing  out  truly  that,  to  a  large  extent,  "morals  fluctuate 
with  trade,"  adds  that,  against  the  importance  of  the  economic  factor, 
it  is  a  suggestive  and  in  every  way  impressive  fact  that  the  majority 
of  the  girls  who  frequent  the  West  End  of  London  ( 88  per  cent.,  accord- 
ing to  the  Salvation  Army's  Registers)  are  drawn  from  domestic  service 
where  the  economic  struggle  is  not  severely  felt  (Arthur  Sherwell,  Life 
in  West  London,  Ch.  V,  "Prostitution" ) . 

It  is  at  the  same  time  worthy  of  note  that  by  the  conditions  of 
their  lives  servants,  more  than  any  other  class,  resemble  prostitutes 
(Bernaldo  de  Quiros  and  Lianas  Aguilaniedo  have  pointed  this  out  in 
La  Mala  Vida  en  Madrid,  p.  240 ) .  Like  prostitutes,  they  are  a  class  of 
women  apart;  they  are  not  entitled  to  the  considerations  and  the  little 
courtesies  usually  paid  to  other  women ;  in  some  countries  they  are  even 
registered,  like  prostitutes;  it  is  scarcely  surprising  that  when  they 
suffer  from  so  many  of  the  disadvantages  of  the  prostitute,  they  should 
sometimes  desire  to  possess  also  some  of  her  advantages.  Lily  Braun 
(Frauenfrage,  pp.  389  et  seq.)  has  set  forth  in  detail  these  unfavorable 
conditions  of  domestic  labor  as  they  bear  on  the  tendency  of  servant- 
girls  to  become  prostitutes.  R,.  de  Ryck&re,  in  his  important  work,  La 
Servante  Criminelle  (1907,  pp.  460  et  seq.;  cf.,  the  same  author's  article, 
"La  Criminalite  Ancillaire,"  Archives  d' Anthropologic  Criminelle,  July 
and  December,  1906),  has  studied  the  psychology  of  the  servant-girl. 
He  finds  that  she  is  specially  marked  by  lack  of  foresight,  vanity,  lack 
of  invention,  tendency  to  imitation,  and  mobility  of  mind.  These  are 
characters  which  ally  her  to  the  prostitute.  De  Ryckere  estimates  the 
proportion  of  former  servants  among  prostitutes  generally  as  fifty  per 
cent.,  and  adds  that  what  is  called  the  "white  slavery"  here  finds  its 
most  complacent  and  docile  victims.  He  remarks,  however,  that  the 
servant  prostitute  is,  on  the  whole,  not  so  much  immoral  as  non-moral. 

In  Paris  Parent-Duchatelet  found  that,  in  proportion  to  their  num- 
ber, servants  furnished  the  largest  contingent  to  prostitution,  and  his 
editors  also  found  that  they  head  the  list  (Parent-Duchatelet,  edition 
1857,  vol.  i,  p.  83).  Among  clandestine  prostitutes  at  Paris,  Commenge 
has  more  recently  found  that  former  servants  constitute  forty  per  cent. 
In  Bordeaux  Jeannel  (De  le  Prostitution  Publique,  p.  102)  also  found 
that  in  1860  forty  per  cent,  of  prostitutes  had  been  servants,  seamstresses 
coming  next  with  thirty-seven  per  cent. 


266  PSYCHOLOGY  OF   SE5. 

In  Germany  and  Austria  it  has  long  been  recognized  that  domestic 
service  furnishes  the  chief  number  of  recruits  to  prostitution.  Lippert, 
in  Germany,  and  Gross-Horfinger,  in  Austria,  pointed  out  this  predomi- 
nance of  maid-servants  and  its  significance  before  the  middle  of  the  nine- 
teenth century,  and  more  recently  Blaschko  has  stated  ("Hygiene  der 
Syphilis"  in  Weyl's  Handbuch  der  Hygiene,  Bd.  ii,  p.  40)  that  among 
Berlin  prostitutes  in  1898  maid-servants  stand  at  the  head  with  fifty-one 
per  cent.  Baumgarten  has  stated  that  in  Vienna  the  proportion  of 
servants  is  fifty-eight  per  cent. 

In  England,  according  to  the  Report  of  a  Select  Committee  of  the 
Lords  on  the  laws  for  the  protection  of  childi'en,  sixty  per  cent,  of  pros- 
titutes have  been  servants.  F.  Remo,  in  his  Vie  Galante  en  Angleterre, 
states  the  proportion  as  eighty  per  cent.  It  would  appear  to  be  even 
higher  as  regards  the  West  End  of  London.  Taking  London  as  a  whole 
the  extensive  statistics  of  Merrick  (Work  Among  the  Fallen),  chaplain 
of  the  Millbank  Prison,  showed  that  out  of  14,790  prostitutes,  5823,  or 
about  forty  per  cent.,  had  previously  been  servants,  laundresses  coming 
next,  and  then  dressmakers;  classifying  his  data  somewhat  more  sum- 
marily and  roughly,  Merrick  found  that  the  proportion  of  servants  was 
fifty-three  per  cent. 

In  America,  among  two  thousand  prostitutes,  Sanger  states  that 
forty-three  per  cent,  had  been  servants,  dressmakers  coming  next,  but 
at  a  long  interval,  with  six  per  cent.  (Sanger,  History  of  Prostitution, 
p.  524).  Among  Philadelphia  prostitutes,  Goodchild  states  that  "do- 
mestics are  probably  in  largest  proportion,"  although  some  recruits  may 
be  found  from  almost  any  occupation. 

It  is  the  same  in  other  countries.  In  Italy,  according  to  Tammeo 
(La  Prostituzione,  p.  100),  servants  come  first  among  prostitutes  with  a 
proportion  of  twenty-eight  per  cent.,  followed  by  the  group  of  dress- 
makers, tailoresses  and  milliners,  seventeen  per  cent.  In  Sardinia,  A. 
Mantegazza  states,  most  prostitutes  are  servants  from  the  country.  In 
Russia,  according  to  Fiaux,  the  proportion  is  forty-five  per  cent.  In 
Madrid,  according  to  Eslava  (as  quoted  by  Bernaldo  de  Quiros  and 
Lianas  Aguilaniedo  (La  Mala  Vida.  en  Madrid,  p.  239),  servants  come  at 
the  head  of  registered  prostitutes  with  twenty-seven  per  cent. — almost 
the  same  proportion  as  in  Italy — and  are  followed  by  dressmakers.  In 
Sweden,  according  to  Welander  (Monatssliefte  fur  Prahtische  Derma- 
tologie,  1899,  p.  477)  among  2541  inscribed  prostitutes,  1586  (or  sixty- 
two  per  cent.)  were  domestic  servants;  at  a  long  interval  followed  210 
seamstresses,  then  168  factory  workers,  etc. 

2.  The  Biological  Factor  of  Prostitution. — Economic  con- 
siderations, as  we  see,  have  a  highly  important  modificatory 


PEOSTITUTION.  267 

influence  on  prostitution,  although  it  is  by  no  means  correct 
to  assert  that  they  form  its  main  cause.  There  is  another 
question  which  has  exercised  many  investigators:  To  what 
extent  are  prostitutes  predestined  to  this  career  by  organic  con- 
stitution? It  is  generally  admitted  that  economic  and  other 
conditions  are  an  exciting  cause  of  prostitution;  in  how  far  are 
those  who  succumb  predisposed  by  the  possession  of  abnormal 
personal  characteristics?  Some  inquirers  have  argued  that  this 
predisposition  is  so  marked  that  prostitution  may  fairly  be 
regarded  as  a  feminine  equivalent  for  criminality,  and  that  in  a 
family  in  which  the  men  instinctively  turn  to  crime,  the  women 
instinctively  turn  to  prostitution.  Others  have  as  strenuously 
denied  this  conclusion. 

Lombroso  has  more  especially  advocated  the  doctrine  that  pros- 
titution is  the  vicarious  equivalent  of  criminality.  In  this  he  was 
developing  the  results  reached,  in  the  important  study  of  the  Jukes 
family,  by  Dugdale,  who  found  that  "there  whei*e  the  brothers  commit 
crime,  the  sisters  adopt  prostitution;"  the  fines  and  imprisonments  of 
the  women  of  the  family  were  not  for  violations  of  the  right  of  property, 
but  mainly  for  offences  against  public  decency.  "The  psychological  as 
well  as  anatomical  identity  of  the  criminal  and  the  born  prostitute," 
Lombroso  and  Ferrero  concluded,  "could  not  be  more  complete :  both  are 
identical  with  the  moral  insane,  and  therefore,  according  to  the  axiom, 
equal  to  each  other.  There  is  the  same  lack  of  moral  sense,  the  same 
hardness  of  heart,  the  same  precocious  taste  for  evil,  the  same  indiffer- 
ence to  social  infamy,  the  same  volatility,  love  of  idleness,  and  lack  of 
foresight,  the  same  taste  for  facile  pleasures,  for  the  orgy  and  for  alcohol, 
the  same,  or  almost  the  same,  vanity.  Prostitution  is  only  the  feminine 
side  of  criminality.  And  so  true  is  it  that  prostitution  and  criminality 
are  two  analogous,  or,  so  to  say,  parallel,  phenomena,  that  at  their 
extremes  they  meet.  The  prostitute  is,  therefore,  psychologically  a 
criminal:  if  she  commits  no  offenses  it  is  because  her  physical  weak- 
ness, her  small  intelligence,  the  facility  of  acquiring  what  she  wants  by 
more  easy  methods,  dispenses  her  from  the  necessity  of  crime,  and  on 
these  very  grounds  prostitution  represents  the  specific  form  of  feminine 
criminality."  The  authors  add  that  "prostitution  is.  in  a  certain  sense, 
socially  useful  as  an  outlet  for  masculine  sexuality  and  a  preventive  of 
crime"   (Lombroso  and  Ferrero,  La  Donna  Delinquente,  1893,  p.  571). 

Those  who  have  opposed  this  view  have  taken  various  grounds,  and 
by  no  means  always  understood  the  position  they  are  attacking.     Thus 


268  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   SEX. 

W.  Fischer  (in  Die  Prostitution)  vigorously  argues  that  prostitution  is 
not  an  inoffensive  equivalent  of  criminality,  but  a  factor  of  criminality. 
Fere,  again  (in  Degenerescence  et  Criminalite) ,  asserts  that  criminality 
and  prostitution  are  not  equivalent,  but  identical.  "Prostitutes  and 
criminals,"  he  holds,  "have  as  a  common  character  their  unproductive- 
ness, and  consequently  they  are  both  anti-social.  Prostitution  thus 
constitutes  a  form  of  criminality."  The  essential  character  of  criminals 
is  not,  however,  their  unproductiveness,  for  that  they  share  with  a  con- 
siderable proportion  of  the  wealthiest  of  the  upper  classes;  it  must  be 
added,  also,  that  the  prostitute,  unlike  the  criminal,  is  exercising  an 
activity  for  which  there  is  a  demand,  for  which  she  is  willingly  paid,  and 
for  which  she  has  to  work  (it  has  sometimes  been  noted  that  the  pros- 
titute looks  down  on  the  thief,  who  "does  not  work")  ;  she  is  carrying 
on  a  profession,  and  is  neither  more  nor  less  productive  than  those  who 
carry  on  many  more  reputable  professions.  Aschaffenburg,  also  believing 
himself  in  opposition  to  Lombroso,  argues,  somewhat  differently  from 
Fere,  that  prostitution  is  not  indeed,  as  Fere  said,  a  form  of  criminality, 
but  that  it  is  too  frequently  united  with  criminality  to  be  regarded  as 
an  equivalent.  Monkemoller  has  more  recently  supported  the  same 
view.  Here,  however,  as  usual,  there  is  a  wide  difference  of  opinion 
as  to  the  proportion  of  prostitutes  of  whom  this  is  true.  It  is  recog- 
nized by  all  investigators  to  be  true  of  a  certain  number,  but  while 
Baumgarten,  from  an  examination  of  eight  thousand  prostitutes,  only 
found  a  minute  proportion  who  were  criminals,  Strohmberg  found  that 
among  462  prostitutes  there  were  as  many  as  175  thieves.  From  another 
side,  Morasso  (as  quoted  in  Archivio  di  PsicJiiatria,  1896,  fasc.  I),  on 
the  strength  of  his  own  investigations,  is  more  clearly  in  opposition  to 
Lombroso,  since  he  protests  altogether  against  any  purely  degenerative 
view  of  prostitutes  which  would  in  any  way  assimilate  them  with 
criminals. 

The  question  of  the  sexuality  of  prostitutes,  which  has  a 
certain  bearing  on  the  question  of  their  tendency  to  degeneration, 
has  been  settled  by  different  writers  in  different  senses.  While 
some,  like  Morasso,  assert  that  sexual  impulse  is  a  main  cause 
inducing  women  to  adopt  a  prostitute's  career,  others  assert  that 
prostitutes  are  usually  almost  devoid  of  sexual  impulse.  Lom- 
broso refers  to  the  prevalence  of  sexual  frigidity  among  prosti- 
tutes.1 In  London,  Merrick,  speaking  from  a  knowledge  of 
over  16,000  prostitutes,  states  that  he  has  met  with  "only  a  very 


1  La  Donna  Delinquente,  p.  401. 


PROSTITUTION.  269 

few  cases"  in  which  gross  sexual  desire  has  been  the  motive  to 
adopt  a  life  of  prostitution.  In  Paris,  Eaciborski  had  stated  at 
a  much  earlier  period  that  "among  prostitutes  one  finds  very  few 
who  are  prompted  to  libertinage  by  sexual  ardor."1  Commenge, 
again,  a  careful  student  of  the  Parisian  prostitute,  cannot  admit 
that  sexual  desire  is  to  be  classed  among  the  serious  causes  of 
prostitution.  "I  have  made  inquiries  of  thousands  of  women  on 
this  point,"  he  states,  "and  only  a  very  small  number  have  told 
me  that  they  were  driven  to  prostitution  for  the  satisfaction  of 
sexual  needs.  Although  girls  who  give  themselves  to  prostitution 
are  often  lacking  in  frankness,  on  this  point,  Pbelieve,  they  have 
no  wish  to  deceive.  When  they  have  sexual  needs  they  do  not 
conceal  them,  but,  on  the  contrary,  show  a  certain  amour-propre 
in  acknowledging  them,  as  a  sufficient  sort  of  justification  for 
their  life ;  so  that  if  only  a  very  small  minority  avow  this  motive 
the  reason  is  that  for  the  great  majority  it  has  no  existence." 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  statements  made  regarding 
the  sexual  frigidity  of  prostitutes  are  often  much  too  unqualified. 
This  is  in  part  certainly  due  to  the  fact  that  they  are  usually 
made  by  those  who  speak  from  a  knowledge  of  old  prostitutes 
whose  habitual  familiarity  with  normal  sexual  intercourse  in  its 
least  attractive  aspects  has  resulted  in  complete  indifference  to 
such  intercourse,  so  far  as  their  clients  are  concerned.2  It  may 
be  stated  with  truth  that  to  the  woman  of  deep  passions  the 
ephemeral  and  superficial  relationships  of  prostitution  can  offer 
no  temptation.  And  it  may  be  added  that  the  majority  of  prosti- 
tutes begin  their  career  at  a  very  early  age,  long  before  the  some- 
what late  period  at  which  in  women  the  tendency  for  passion  to 


1  Raciborski,  Traite  de  I'Impuissance,  p.  20.  It  may  be  added  that 
Bergh,  a  leading  authority  on  the  anatomical  peculiarities  of  the  external 
female  sexual  organs,  who  believe  that  strong  development  of  the  external 
genital  organs  accompanies  libidinous  tendencies,  has  not  found  such 
development  to  be  common  among  prostitutes. 

2  Hammer,  who  has  had  much  opportunity  of  studying  the  psychol- 
ogy of  prostitutes,  remarks  that  he  has  seen  no  reason  to  suspect  sexual 
coldness  {Monatsschrift  fiir  HarnJcrankheiten  und  Sexuelle  Hygiene, 
1906,  Heft  2,  p.  85),  although,  as  he  has  elsewhere  stated,  he  is  of  opin- 
ion that  indolence,  rather  than  excess  of  sensuality,  is  the  chief  cause 
of  prostitution. 


270  PSYCHOLOGY    OP    SES. 

become  strong,  has  yet  arrived.1  It  may  also  be  said  that  an 
indifference  to  sexual  relationships,  a  tendency  to  attach  no  per- 
sonal value  to  them,  is  often  a  predisposing  cause  in  the  adoption 
of  a  prostitute's  career ;  the  general  mental  shallowness  of  prosti- 
tutes may  well  be  accompanied  by  shallowness  of  physical 
emotion.  On  the  other  hand,  many  prostitutes,  at  all  events  early 
in  their  careers,  appear  to  show  a  marked  degree  of  sensuality, 
and  to  women  of  coarse  sexual  fibre  the  career  of  prostitution  has 
not  been  without  attractions  from  this  point  of  view;  the 
gratification  of  physical  desire  is  known  to  act  as  a  motive  in 
some  cases  and  is  clearly  indicated  in  others.2  This  is  scarcely 
surprising  when  we  remember  that  prostitutes  are  in  a  very  large 
proportion  of  cases  remarkably  robust  and  healthy  persons  in 
general  respects.3  They  withstand  without  difficulty  the  risks  of 
their  profession,  and  though  under  its  influence  the  manifesta- 
tions of  sexual  feeling  can  scarcely  fail  to  become  modified  or 
perverted  in  course  of  time,  that  is  no  proof  of  the  original 
absence  of  sexual  sensibility.  It  is  not  even  a  proof  of  its  loss, 
for  the  real  sexual  nature  of  the  normal  prostitute,  and  her 
possibilities  of  sexual  ardor,  are  chiefly  manifested,  not  in  her 
professional  relations  with  her  clients,  but  in  her  relations  with 
her  "fancy  boy"  or  "bully."4  It  is  quite  true  that  the  conditions 
of  her  life  often  make  it  practically  advantageous  to  the  prosti- 
tute to  have  attached  to  her  a  man  who  is  devoted  to  her  interests 


i  See  "The  Sexual  Impulse  in  Women,"  in  the  third  volume  of 
these  Studies. 

2  Tait  stated  that  in  Edinburgh  many  married  women  living  with 
their  husbands  in  comfortable  circumstances,  and  having  children,  were 
found  to  be  acting  as  prostitutes,  that  is,  in  the  regular  habit  of  making 
assignations  with  strangers  ( W.  Tait,  Magdalenism  in  Edinburgh,  1842, 
p.  16). 

3  Janke  brings  together  opinions  to  this  effect,  Die  Willkilrliclie 
Hervorbringen  des  Geschlechts,  p.  275.  "If  we  compare  a  prostitute  of 
thirty-five  with  her  respectable  sister,"  Acton  remarked  {Prostitution, 
1870,  p.  39),  "we  seldom  find  that  the  constitutional  ravages  often 
thought  to  be  necessary  consequences  of  prostitution  exceed  those  attrib- 
utable to  the  cares  of  a  family  and  the  heart-wearing  struggles  of 
virtuous  labor." 

4Hirschfeld  states  (Wesen  der  Liebe,  p.  35)  that  the  desire  for 
intercourse  with  a  sympathetic  person  is  heightened,  and  not  decreased, 
by  a  professional  act  of  coitus. 


PROSTITUTION.  271 

and  will  defend  them  if  necessary,  but  that  is  only  a  secondary, 
occasional,  and  subsidiary  advantage  of  the  "fancy  boy/'  so  far 
as  prostitutes  generally  are  concerned.  She  is  attracted  to  him 
primarily  because  he  appeals  to  her  personally  and  she  wants  him 
for  herself.  The  motive  of  her  attachment  is,  above  all,  erotic, 
in  the  full  sense,  involving  not  merely  sexual  relations  but 
possession  and  common  interests,  a  permanent  and  intimate 
life  led  together.  "You  know  that  what  one  does  in  the  way 
of  business  cannot  fill  one's  heart,"  said  a  German  prostitute; 
"Why  should  we  not  have  a  husband  like  other  women  ?  I,  too, 
need  love.  If  that  were  not  so  we  should  not  want  a  bully." 
And  he,  on  his  part,  reciprocates  this  feeling  and  is  by  no  means 
merely  moved  by  self-interest.1 

One  of  my  correspondents,  who  has  had  much  experience  of  prosti- 
tutes, not  only  in  Britain,  but  also  in  Germany,  France,  Belgium  and 
Holland,  has  found  that  the  normal  manifestations  of  sexual  feeling  are 
much  more  common  in  British  than  in  continental  prostitutes.  "I  should 
say,"  he  writes,  "that  in  normal  coitus  foreign  women  are  generally 
unconscious  of  sexual  excitement.  I  don't  think  I  have  ever  known  a 
foreign  woman  who  had  any  semblance  of  orgasm.  British  women,  on 
the  other  hand,  if  a  man  is  moderately  kind,  and  shows  that  he  has 
some  feelings  beyond  mere  sensual  gratification,  often  abandon  them- 
selves to  the  wildest  delights  of  sexual  excitement.  Of  course  in  this 
life,  as  in  others,  there  is  keen  competition,  and  a  woman,  to  vie  with 
her  competitors,  must  please  her  gentlemen  friends;  but  a  man  of  the 
world  can  always  distinguish  between  real  and  simulated  passion."  (It 
is  possible,  however,  that  he  may  be  most  successful  in  arousing  the 
feelings  of  his  own  fellow-country  women.)  On  the  other  hand,  this 
writer  finds  that  the  foreign  women  are  more  anxious  to  provide  for  the 
enjoyment  of  their  temporary  consorts  and  to  ascertain  what  pleases 


i  This  has  been  clearly  shown  by  Hans  Ostwald  ( from  whom  I  take 
the  above-quoted  observation  of  a  prostitute ) ,  one  of  the  best  authorities 
on  prostitute  life  and  character;  see,  e.g.,  his  article,  "Die  erotischen 
Beziehungen  zwischen  Dime  und  Zuhalter,"  Sexual-Probleme,  June, 
1908.  In  the  subsequent  number  of  the  same  periodical  (July,  1908, 
p.  393)  Dr.  Max  Marcuse  supports  Ostwald's  experiences,  and  says  that 
the  letters  of  prostitutes  and  their  bullies  are  love-letters  exactly  like 
those  of  respectable  people  of  the  same  class,  and  with  the  same  elements 
of  love  and  jealousy;  these  relationships,  he  remarks,  often  prove  very 
enduring.  The  prostitute  author  of  the  Tagebuch  einer  Verlorenen  (p. 
147)  also  has  some  remarks  on  the  prostitute's  relations  to  her  bully, 
stating  that  it  is  simply  the  natural  relationship  of  a  girl  to  her  lover. 


272  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

them.  "The  foreigner  seems  to  make  it  the  business  of  her  life  to  dis- 
cover some  abnormal  mode  of  sexual  gratification  for  her  consort."  For 
their  own  pleasure  also  foreign  prostitutes  frequently  ask  for  cunni- 
linctus,  in  preference  to  normal  coitus,  while  anal  coitus  is  also  com 
mon.  The  difference  evidently  is  that  the  British  women,  when  they 
seek  gratification,  find  it  in  normal  coitus,  while  the  foreign  women 
prefer  more  abnormal  methods.  There  is,  however,  one  class  of  British 
prostitutes  which  this  correspondent  finds  to  be  an  exception  to  the 
general  rule :  the  class  of  those  who  are  recruited  from  the  lower  walks 
of  the  stage.  "Such  women  are  generally  more  licentious — that  is  to 
say,  more  acquainted  with  the  bizarre  in  sexualism — than  girls  who 
come  from  shops  or  bars;  they  show  a  knowledge  of  fellatio,  and  even 
anal  coitus,  and  during  menstruation  frequently  suggest  inter-mammary 
coitus." 

On  the  whole  it  would  appear  that  prostitutes,  though  not 
usually  impelled  to  their  life  by  motives  of  sensuality,  on  entering 
and  during  the  early  part  of  their  career  possess  a  fairly  average 
amount  of  sexual  impulse,  with  variations  in  both  directions  of 
excess  and  deficiency  as  well  as  of  perversion.  At  a  somewhat 
later  period  it  is  useless  to  attempt  to  measure  the  sexual  impulse 
of  prostitutes  by  the  amount  of  pleasure  they  take  in  the  pro- 
fessional performance  of  sexual  intercourse.  It  is  necessary  to 
ascertain  whether  they  possess  sexual  instincts  which  are 
gratified  in  other  ways.  In  a  large  proportion  of  cases  this  is 
found  to  be  so.  Masturbation,  especially,  is  extremely  common 
among  prostitutes  everywhere;  however  prevalent  it  may  be 
among  women  who  have  no  other  means  of  obtaining  sexual 
gratification  it  is  admitted  by  all  to  be  still  more  prevalent  among 
prostitutes,  indeed  almost  universal.1 

Homosexualit}',  though  not  so  common  as  masturbation,  is 
very  frequently  found  among  prostitutes — in  France,  it  would 
seem,  more  frequently  than  in  England — and  it  may  indeed  be 


1  Thus  Moraglia  found  that  among  180  prostitutes  in  North  Italian 
brothels,  and  among  23  elegant  Italian  and  foreign  cocottes,  every  one 
admitted  that  she  masturbated,  preferably  by  friction  of  the  clitoris; 
113  of  them,  the  majority,  declared  that  they  preferred  solitary  or 
mutual  masturbation  to  normal  coitus.  Hammer  states  (Zehn  Leoens- 
laufe  Berliner  Kontrollmaclchen  in  Ostwald's  series  of  "Grosstadt 
Dokumente,"  1905)  that  when  in  hospital  all  but  three  or  four  of  sixty 
prostitutes  masturbate,  and  those  who  do  not  are  laughed  at  by  the  rest. 


PROSTITUTION".  273 

said  that  it  occurs  more  often  among  prostitutes  than  among  any 
other  class  of  women.  It  is  favored  by  the  acquired  distaste  for 
normal  coitus  due  to  professional  intercourse  with  men,  which 
leads  homosexual  relationships  to  be  regarded  as  pure  and  ideal 
by  comparison.  It  would  appear  also  that  in  a  considerable  pro- 
portion of  cases  prostitutes  present  a  congenital  condition  of 
sexual  inversion,  such  a  condition,  with  an  accompanying 
indifference  to  intercourse  with  men,  being  a  predisposing  cause 
of  the  adoption  of  a  prostitute's  career.  Kurella  even  regards 
prostitutes  as  constituting  a  sub-variety  of  congenital  inverts. 
Anna  Eiiling  in  Germany  states  that  about  twenty  per  cent, 
prostitutes  are  homosexual;  when  asked  what  induced  them  to 
become  prostitutes,  more  than  one  inverted  woman  of  the  street 
has  replied  to  her  that  it  was  purely  a  matter  of  business,  sexual 
feeling  not  coming  into  the  question  except  with  a  friend  of  the 
same  sex.1 

The  occurrence  of  congenital  inversion  among  prostitutes — 
although  we  need  not  regard  prostitutes  as  necessarily  degenerate 
as  a  class — suggests  the  question  whether  we  are  likely  to  find  an 
unusually  large  number  of  physical  and  other  anomalies  among 
them.  It  cannot  be  said  that  there  is  unanimity  of  opinion  on 
this  point.  For  some  authorities  prostitutes  are  merely  normal 
ordinary  women  of  low  social  rank,  if  indeed  their  instincts  are 
not  even  a  little  superior  to  those  of  the  class  in  which  they  were 
born.  Other  investigators  find  among  them  so  large  a  proportion 
of  individuals  deviating  from  the  normal  that  they  are  inclined 
to  place  prostitutes  generally  among  one  or  other  of  the 
abnormal  classes.2 


1  Jahriuch  fur  Sexuelle  Zivischenstufen,  Jahrgang  VII,  1905,  p. 
148;  "Sexual  Inversion,"  vol.  ii  of  these  Studies,  Ch.  IV.  Hammer 
found  that  of  twenty-five  prostitutes  in  a  reformatory  as  many  as  twenty- 
three  were  homosexual,  or,  on  good  grounds,  suspected  to  be  such. 
Hirschfeld  (Berlins  Drittes  Geschlecht,  p.  65)  mentions  that  prostitutes 
sometimes  accost  better-class  women  who,  from  their  man-like  air,  they 
take  to  be  homosexual;  from  persons  of  their  own  sex  prostitutes  will 
accept  a  smaller  remuneration,  and  sometimes  refuse  payment  altogether. 

2  With  prostitution,  as  with  criminality,  it  is  of  course  difficult  to 
disentangle  the  element  of  heredity  from  that  of  environment,  even  when 
we  have  good  grounds  for  believing  that  the  factor  of  heredity  here,  as 
throughout  the  whole  of  life,  cannot  fail  to  carry  much  weight.    It  is 

18 


274  PSYCHOLOGY   OP   SEX. 

Baunigarten,  in  Vienna,  from  a  knowledge  of  over  8000  prostitutes, 
concluded  that  only  a  very  minute  proportion  are  either  criminal  or 
psychopathic  in  temperament  or  organization  (Archiv  fur  Kriminal- 
Anthropologie,  vol.  xi,  1902).  It  is  not  clear,  however,  that  Baumgar- 
ten carried  out  any  detailed  and  precise  investigations.  Mr.  Lane,  a 
London  police  magistrate,  has  stated  as  the  result  of  his  own  observa- 
tion, that  prostitution  is  "at  once  a  symptom  and  outcome  of  the  same 
deteriorated  physique  and  decadent  moral  fibre  which  determine  the 
manufacture  of  male  tramps,  petty  thieves,  and  professional  beggars,  of 
whom  the  prostitute  is  in  general  the  female  analogue"  (Ethnological 
Journal,  April,  1905,  p.  41).  This  estimate  is  doubtless  correct  as 
regards  a  considerable  proportion  of  the  women,  often  enfeebled  by  drink, 
who  pass  through  the  police  courts,  but  it  could  scarcely  be  applied  with- 
out qualification  to  prostitutes  generally. 

Morasso  (Archivio  di  Psichiatria,  1896,  fasc.  I)  has  protested 
against  a  purely  degenerative  view  of  prostitutes  on  the  strength  of  his 
own  observations.  There  is,  he  states,  a  category  of  prostitutes,  un- 
known to  scientific  inquirers,  which  he  calls  that  of  the  prostitute  di 
alto  oordo.  Among  these  the  signs  of  degeneration,  physical  or  moral, 
are  .not  to  be  found  in  greater  number  than  among  women  who  do  not 
belong  to  prostitution.  They  reveal  all  sorts  of  characters,  some  of  them 
showing  great  refinement,  and  are  chiefly  marked  off  by  the  possession 
of  an  unusual  degree  of  sexual  appetite.  Even  among  the  more  degraded 
group  of  the  oassa  prostituzione,  he  asserts,  we  find  a  predominance  of 
sexual,  as  well  as  professional,  characters,  rather  than  the  signs  of  degen- 
eration. It  is  sufficient  to  quote  one  more  testimony,  as  set  down  many 
years  ago  by  a  woman  of  high  intelligence  and  character,  Mrs.  Craik,  the 
novelist:  "The  women  who  fall  are  by  no  means  the  worst  of  their  sta- 
tion," she  wrote.  "I  have  heard  it  affirmed  by  more  than  one  lady — by 
one  in  particular  whose  experience  was  as  large  as  her  benevolence — that 
many  of  them  are  of  the  very  best,  refined,  intelligent,  truthful,  and 
affectionate.  'I  don't  know  how  it  is,'  she  would  say,  'whether  their 
very  superiority  makes  them  dissatisfied  with  their  own  rank — such 
brutes  or  clowns  as  laboring  men  often  are! — so  that  they  fall  easier 
victims  to  the  rank  above  them;  or  whether,  though  this  theory  will 
shock  many  people,  other  virtues  can  exist  and  flourish  entirely  distinct 

certain,  in  any  case,  that  prostitution  frequently  runs  in  families.  "It 
has  often  been  my  experience,"  writes  a  former  prostitute  (Hedwig 
Hard,  Beichte  einer  Gefallenen,  p.  156)  "that  when  in  a  family  a  girl 
enters  this  path,  her  sister  soon  afterwards  follows  her:  I  have  met 
with  innumerable  cases;  sometimes  three  sisters  will  all  be  on  the  reg- 
ister, and  I  knew  a  case  of  four  sisters,  whose  mother,  a  midwife,  had 
been  in  prison,  and  the  father  drank.  In  this  case,  all  four  sisters,  who 
were  very  beautiful,  married,  one  at  least  very  happily,  to  a  rich  doctor 
who  took  her  out  of  the  brothel  at  sixteen  and  educated  her." 


PROSTITUTION.  275 

from,  and  after  the  loss  of,  that  which  we  are  accustomed  to  believe  the 
indispensable  prime  virtue  of  our  sex — chastity.  I  cannot  explain  it; 
I  can  only  say  that  it  is  so,  that  some  of  my  most  promising  village  girls 
have  been  the  first  to  come  to  harm;  and  some  of  the  best  and  most 
faithful  servants  I  ever  had,  have  been  girls  who  have  fallen  into  shame, 
and  who,  had  I  not  gone  to  the  rescue  and  put  them  in  the  way  to  do 
well,  would  infallibly  have  become  'lost  women'"  (A  Woman's  Thoughts 
About  Women,  1858,  p.  291).  Various  writers  have  insisted  on  the  good 
moral  qualities  of  prostitutes.  Thus  in  France,  Despine  first  enumerates 
their  vices  as  ( 1 )  greediness  and  love  of  drink,  ( 2 )  lying,  ( 3 )  anger, 
(4)  want  of  order  and  untidiness,  (5)  mobility  of  character,  (6)  need 
of  movement,  (7)  tendency  to  homosexuality;  and  then  proceeds  to 
detail  their  good  qualities:  their  maternal  and  filial  affection,  their 
charity  to  each  other;  and  their  refusal  to  denounce  each  other;  while 
they  are  frequently  religious,  sometimes  modest,  and  generally  very  hon- 
est (Despine,  Psychologie  "Naturelle,  vol.  iii,  pp.  207  et  seq.;  as  regards 
Sicilian  prostitutes,  cf.  Callari,  Archivio  di  Psichiatria,  fasc.  IV,  1903). 
The  charity  towards  each  other,  often  manifested  in  distress,  is  largely 
neutralized  by  a  tendency  to  professional  suspicion  and  jealousy  of  each 
other. 

Lombroso  believes  that  the  basis  of  prostitution  must  be  found  in 
moral  idiocy.  If  by  moral  idiocy  we  are  to  understand  a  condition  at 
all  closely  allied  with  insanity,  this  assertion  is  dubious.  There  seems 
no  clear  relationship  between  prostitution  and  insanity,  and  Tammeo 
has  shown  (La  Prostituzione,  p.  76)  that  the  frequency  of  prostitutes  in 
the  various  Italian  provinces  is  in  inverse  ratio  to  the  frequency  of 
insane  persons;  as  insanity  increases,  prostitution  decreases.  But  if 
we  mean  a  minor  degree  of  moral  imbecility — that  is  to  say,  a  bluntness 
of  perception  for  the  ordinary  moral  considerations  of  civilization  which, 
while  it  is  largely  due  to  the  hardening  influence  of  an  unfavorable  early 
environment,  may  also  rest  on  a  congenital  predisposition — there  can 
be  no  doubt  that  moral  imbecility  of  slight  degree  is  very  frequently 
found  among  prostitutes.  It  would  be  plausible,  doubtless,  to  say  that 
every  woman  who  gives  her  virginity  in  exchange  for  an  inadequate 
return  is  an  imbecile.  If  she  gives  herself  for  love,  she  has,  at  the  worst, 
made  a  foolish  mistake,  such  as  the  young  and  inexperienced  may  at  any 
time  make.  But  if  she  deliberately  proposes  to  sell  herself,  and  does  so 
for  nothing  or  next  to  nothing,  the  case  is  altered.  The  experiences  of 
Commenge  in  Paris  are  instructive  on  this  point.  "For  many  young 
girls,"  he  writes,  "modesty  has  no  existence,  they  experience  no  emotion 
in  showing  themselves  completely  undressed,  they  abandon  themselves  to 
any  chance  individual  whom  they  will  never  see  again.  They  attach  no 
importance  to  their  virginity;  they  are  deflowered  under  the  strangest 
conditions,  without  the  least  thought  or  care  about  the  act  they  are 


276  PSYCHOLOGY    OE    SEX. 

accomplishing.  No  sentiment,  no  calculation,  pushes  them  into  a  man's 
arms.  They  let  themselves  go  without  reflexion  and  without  motive,  in 
an  almost  animal  manner,  from  indifference  and  without  pleasure."  He 
was  acquainted  with  forty-five  girls  between  the  ages  of  twelve  and  seven- 
teen who  were  deflowered  by  chance  strangers  whom  they  never  met 
again;  they  lost  their  virginity,  in  Dumas's  phrase,  as  they  lost  their 
milk-teeth,  and  could  giA^e  no  plausible  account  of  the  loss.  A  girl  of 
fifteen,  mentioned  by  Commenge,  living  with  her  parents  who  supplied 
all  her  wants,  lost  her  virginity  by  casually  meeting  a  man  who  offered 
her  two  francs  if  she  would  go  with  him ;  she  did  so  without  demur  and 
soon  begun  to  accost  men  on  her  own  account.  A  girl  of  fourteen,  also 
living  comfortably  with  her  parents,  sacrificed  her  virginity  at  a  fair  in 
return  for  a  glass  of  beer,  and  henceforth  begun  to  associate  with  pros- 
titutes. Another  girl  of  the  same  age,  at  a  local  fete,  wishing  to  go 
round  on  the  hobby  horse,  spontaneously  offered  herself  to  the  man  direct- 
ing the  machinery  for  the  pleasure  of  a  ride.  Yet  another  girl,  of  fifteen, 
at  another  f§te,  offered  her  virginity  in  return  for  the  same  momentary 
joy  (Commenge,  Prostitution  Clandestine,  1S97,  pp.  101  et  seq.) .  In  the 
United  States,  Dr.  W.  Travis  Gibb,  examining  physician  to  the  New 
York  Society  for  the  Prevention  of  Cruelty  to  Children,  bears  similar 
testimony  to  the  fact  that  in  a  fairly  large  proportion  of  "rape"  cases 
the  child  is  the  willing  victim.  "It  is  horribly  pathetic,"  he  says  (Med- 
ical Record,  April  20,  1907),  "to  learn  how  far  a  nickel  or  a  quarter 
will  go  towards  purchasing  the  virtue  of  these  children." 

In  estimating  the  tendency  of  prostitutes  to  display  congenital 
physical  anomalies,  the  crudest  and  most  obvious  test,  though  not  a 
precise  or  satisfactory  one,  is  the  general  impression  produced  by  the 
face.  In  France,  when  nearly  1000  prostitutes  were  divided  into  five 
groups  from  the  point  of  view  of  their  looks,  only  from  seven  to  fourteen 
per  cent,  were  found  to  belong  to  the  first  group,  or  that  of  those  who 
could  be  said  to  possess  youth  and  beruty  (Jeannel,  De  la  Prostitution 
Publique,  1860,  p.  168).  Woods  Hutchinson,  again,  judging  from  an 
extensive  acquaintance  with  London,  Paris,  Vienna,  New  York,  Philadel- 
phia, and  Chicago,  asserts  that  a  handsome  or  even  attractive-looking 
prostitute,  is  rare,  and  that  the  general  average  of  beauty  is  lower  than 
in  any  other  class  of  women.  "Whatever  other  evils,"  he  remarks,  "the 
fatal  power  of  beauty  may  be  responsible  for,  it  has  nothing  to  do  with 
prostitution"  (Woods  Hutchinson,  "The  Economics  of  Prostitution," 
American  Gynaecological  and  Obstetric  Journal,  September,  1895).  It 
must,  of  course,  be  borne  in  mind  that  these  estimates  are  liable  to  be 
vitiated  through  being  based  chiefly  on  the  inspection  of  women  who 
most  obviously  belong  to  the  class  of  prostitutes  and  have  already  been 
coarsened  by  their  profession. 

If  we  may  conclude — and  the  fact  is  probably  undisputed — that 


PROSTITUTION.  277 

beautiful,  agreeable,  and  harmoniously  formed  faces  are  rare  rather  than 
common  among  prostitutes,  we  may  certainly  say  that  minute  examina- 
tion will  reveal  a  large  number  of  physical  abnormalities.  One  of  the 
earliest  important  physical  investigations  of  prostitutes  was  that  of  Dr. 
Pauline  Tarnowsky  in  Russia  (first  published  in  the  Vratch  in  1887,  and 
afterwards  as  Etudes  anthropometriques  sur  les  Prostituees  et  les 
Yoleuses) .  She  examined  fifty  St.  Petersburg  prostitutes  who  had  been 
inmates  of  a  brothel  for  not  less  than  two  years,  and  also  fifty  peasant 
women  of,  so  far  as  possible,  the  same  age  and  mental  development.  She 
found  that  (1)  the  prostitute  showed  shorter  anterior-posterior  and 
transverse  diameters  of  skull;  (2)  a  proportion  equal  to  eighty- four  per 
cent,  showed  various  signs  of  physical  degeneration  (irregular  skull, 
asymmetry  of  face,  anomalies  of  hard  palate,  teeth,  ears,  etc.).  This 
tendency  to  anomaly  among  the  prostitutes  was  to  some  extent  explained 
when  it  was  found  that  about  four-fifths  of  them  had  parents  who  were 
habitual  drunkards,  and  nearly  one-fifth  were  the  last  survivors  of  large 
families;    such  families  have  been  often  produced  by  degenerate  parents. 

The  frequency  of  hereditary  degeneration  has  been  noted  by  Bon- 
hoeffer  among  German  prostitutes.  He  investigated  190  Breslau  prosti- 
tutes in  prison,  and  therefore  of  a  more  abnormal  class  than  ordinary 
prostitutes,  and  found  that  102  were  hereditarily  degenerate,  and  mostly 
with  one  or  both  parents  who  were  drunkards;  53  also  showed  feeble- 
mindedness (Zeitschrift  fur  die  Gesamte  Strafwissenschaft,  Bd.  xxiii,  p. 
106). 

The  most  detailed  examinations  of  ordinary  non-criminal  prosti- 
tutes, both  anthropometrically  and  as  regards  the  prevalence  of  anom- 
alies, have  been  made  in  Italy,  though  not  on  a  sufficiently  large 
number  of  subjects  to  yield  absolutely  decisive  results.  Thus  Fornasari 
made  a  detailed  examination  of  sixty  prostitutes  belonging  chiefly  to 
Emilia  and  Venice,  and  also  of  twenty-seven  others  belonging  to  Bologna, 
the  latter  group  being  compared  with  a  third  group  of  twenty  normal 
women  belonging  to  Bologna  (Archivio  di  Psichiatria,  1892,  fasc.  VI). 
The  prostitutes  were  found  to  be  of  lower  type  than  the  normal  in- 
dividuals, having  smaller  heads  and  larger  faces.  As  the  author  himself 
points  out,  his  subjects  were  not  sufficiently  numerous  to  justify  far- 
reaching  generalizations,  but  it  may  be  worth  while  to  summarize  some 
of  his  results.  At  equal  heights  the  prostitutes  showed  greater  weight; 
at  equal  ages  they  were  of  shorter  stature  than  other  women,  not  only 
of  well-to-do.  but  of  the  poor  class :  height  of  face,  bi-zygomatic  diameter 
(though  not  the  distance  between  zygomas),  the  distance  from  chin  to 
external  auditory  meatus,  and  the  size  of  the  jaw  were  all  greater  in  the 
prostitutes;  the  hands  were  longer  and  broader,  compared  to  the  palm, 
than  in  ordinary  women;  the  foot  also  was  longer  in  prostitutes,  and 
the  thigh,  as  compared  to  the  calf,  was  larger.     It  is  noteworthy  that  in 


278  PSYCHOLOGY   OF    SEX. 

most  particulars,  and  especially  in  regard  to  head  measurements,  the 
variations  were  much  greater  among  the  prostitutes  than  among  the 
other  women  examined;  this  is  to  some  extent,  though  not  entirely,  to 
be  accounted  for  by  the  slightly  greater  number  of  the  former. 

Ardu  (in  the  same  number  of  the  Archivio)  gave  the  result  of 
observations  (undertaken  at  Lombroso's  suggestion)  as  to  the  frequency 
of  abnormalities  among  prostitutes.  The  subjects  were  seventy-four  in 
number  and  belonged  to  Professor  Giovannini's  Clinica  Bifilopatica  at 
Turin.  The  abnormalities  investigated  were  virile  distribution  of  hair 
on  pubes,  chest,  and  limbs,  hypertrichosis  on  foreheal,  left-handedness, 
atrophy  of  nipple,  and  tattooing  (which  was  only  found  once).  Com- 
bining x\rdu's  observations  with  another  series  of  observations  on  fifty- 
five  prostitutes  examined  by  Lombroso,  i;  is  Jound  that  virile  disposition 
of  hair  is  found  in  fifteen  per  cent,  as  against  six  per  cent,  in  normal 
women;  some  degree  of  hypertrichosis  in  eighteen  per  cent.;  left-handed- 
ness in  eleven  per  cent,  (but  in  normal  women  as  high  as  twelve  per 
cent,  according  to  Gallia)  ;    and  atrophy  of  nipple  in  twelve  per  cent. 

Giuffrida-Ruggeri,  again  {Atti  della  Cocieta  Romana  di  Antro- 
pologia,  1897,  p.  216),  on  examining  eighty-two  prostitutes  found 
anomalies  in  the  following  order  of  decreasing  frequency:  tendency  of 
eyebrows  to  meet,  lack  of  cranial  symmetry,  depression  at  root  of  nose, 
defective  development  of  calves,  hypertrichosis  and  other  anomalies  of 
hair,  adherent  or  absent  lobule,  prominent  zigoma,  prominent  forehead 
or  frontal  bones,  bad  implantation  of  teeth,  Darwinian  tubercle  of  ear, 
thin  vertical  lips.  These  signs  are  separately  of  little  or  no  importance, 
though  together  not  without  significance  as  an  indication  of  general 
anomaly. 

More  recently  Ascarilla,  in  an  elaborate  study  {Archivio  di  Psi- 
chiatria,  1906,  fasc.  VI,  p.  812)  of  the  finger  prints  of  prostitutes,  comes 
to  the  conclusion  that  even  in  this  respect  prostitutes  tend  to  form  a 
class  showing  morphological  inferiority  to  normal  women.  The  patterns 
tend  to  show  unusual  simplicity  and  uniformity,  and  the  significance  of 
this  is  indicated  by  the  fact  that  a  similar  uniformity  is  shown  by  the 
finger  prints  of  the  insane  and  deaf-mutes  (De  Sanctis  and  Toscano,  Atti 
Societa  Romana  Antropologia,  vol.  viii,  1901,  fasc.  II). 

In  Chicago  Dr.  Harriet  Alexander,  in  conjunction  with  Dr.  E.  S. 
Talbot  and  Dr.  J.  G.  Kiernan,  examined  thirty  prostitutes  in  the  Bride- 
well, or  House  of  Correction;  only  the  "obtuse"  class  of  professional 
prostitutes  reach  this  institution,  and  it  is  not  therefore  surprising  that 
they  were  found  to  exhibit  very  marked  stigmata  of  degeneracy.  In 
race  nearly  half  of  those  examined  were  Celtic  Irish.  In  sixteen  the 
zygomatic  processes  were  unequal  and  very  prominent.  Other  facial 
asymmetries  were  common.  In  three  cases  the  heads  were  of  Mongoloid 
type;   sixteen  were  epignathic,  and  eleven  prognathic;   five  showed  arrest 


PROSTITUTION".  279 

of  development  of  face.  Brachycephaly  predominated  (seventeen  eases) ; 
the  rest  were  mesatieephalic;  there  were  no  dolichocephals.  Abnormali- 
ties in  shape  of  the  skull  were  numerous,  and  twenty-nine  had  defective 
ears.  Four  were  demonstrably  insane,  and  one  was  an  epileptic  (H.  G. 
B.  Alexander,  "Physical  Abnormalities  in  Prostitutes,"  Chicago  Academy 
of  Medicine,  April,  1893;  E.  S.  Talbot,  Degeneracy,  p.  320;  Id.,  Irreg- 
ularities of  the  Teeth,  fourth  edition,  p.  141 ) . 

It  would  seem,  on  the  whole,  so  far  as  the  evidence  at  present 
goes,  that  prostitutes  are  not  quite  normal  representatives  of  the 
ranks  into  which  they  were  born.  There  has  been  a  process  of 
selection  of  individuals  who  slightly  deviate  congenitally  from 
the  normal  average  and  are,  correspondingly,  slightly  inapt  for 
normal  life.1  The  psychic  characteristics  which  accompany  such 
deviation  are  not  always  necessarily  of  an  obviously  unfavorable 
nature ;  the  slightly  neurotic  girl  of  low  class  birth — disinclined 
for  hard  work,  through  defective  energy,  and  perhaps  greedy  and 
selfish — may  even  seem  to  possess  a  refinement  superior  to  her 
station.  While,  however,  there  is  a  tendency  to  anomaly  among 
prostitutes,  it  must  be  clearly  recognized  that  that  tendency 
remains  slight  so  long  as  Ave  consider  impartially  the  whole  class 
of  prostitutes.  Those  investigators  who  have  reached  the  con- 
clusion that  prostitutes  are  a  highly  degenerate  and  abnormal 
class  have  only  observed  special  groups  of  prostitutes,  more 
especially  those  who  are  frequently  found  in  prison.  It  is  not 
possible  to  form  a  just  conception  of  prostitutes  by  studying  them 
only  in  prison,  any  more  than  it  would  be  possible  to  form  a  just 
conception  of  clergymen,  doctors,  or  lawyers  by  studying  them 
exclusively  in  prison,  and  this  remains  true  even  although  a  much 
larger  proportion  of  prostitutes  than  of  members  of  the  more 
reputable  professions  pass  through  prisons;  that  fact  no  doubt 
partly  indicates  the  greater  abnormality  of  prostitutes. 

It  has,  of  course,  to  be  remembered  that  the  special  condi- 
tions of  the  lives  of  prostitutes  tend  to  cause  in  them  the  appear- 
ance of  certain  professional  characteristics  which  are  entirely 
acquired  and  not  congenital.  In  that  way  we  may  account  for 
the  gradual  modification  of  the  feminine  secondary  and  tertiary 

1  This  fact  is  not  contradicted  by  the  undoubted  fact  that  prosti- 
tutes are  by  no  means  always  contented  with  the  life  they  choose. 


280  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   SEX. 

sexual  characters,  and  the  appearance  of  masculine  characters, 
such  as  the  frequent  deep  voice,  etc.1  But  with  all  due  allowance 
for  these  acquired  characters,  it  remains  true  that  such  compara- 
tive investigations  as  have  so  far  been  made,  although  inconclu- 
sive, seem  to  indicate  that,  even  apart  from  the  prevalence  of 
acquired  anomalies,  the  professional  selection  of  their  avocation 
tends  to  separate  out  from  the  general  population  of  the  same 
social  class,  individuals  who  possess  anthropometrical  characters 
varying  in  a  definite  direction.  The  observations  thus  made  seem, 
in  this  way,  to  indicate  that  prostitutes  tend  to  be  in  weight  over 
the  average,  though  not  in  stature,  that  in  length  of  arm  they  are 
inferior  though  the  hands  are  longer  (this  has  been  found  alike 
in  Italy  and  Eussia)  ;  they  have  smaller  ankles  and  larger  calves, 
and  still  larger  thighs  in  proportion  to  their  large  calves.  The 
estimated  skull  capacity  and  the  skull  circumference  and 
diameters  are  somewhat  below  the  normal,  not  only  when  com- 
pared with  respectable  women  but  also  with  thieves;  there  is  a 
tendency  to  brachycephaly  (both  in  Italy  and  Eussia)  ;  the 
cheek-bones  are  usually  prominent  and  the  jaws  developed;  the 
hair  is  darker  than  in  respectable  women  though  less  so  than 
in  thieves;  it  is  also  unusually  abundant,  not  only  on  the  head 
but  also  on  the  pudenda  and  elsewhere;  the  eyes  have  been 
found  to  be  decidedly  darker  than  those  of  either  respectable 
women  or  criminals.2 

So  far  as  the  evidence  goes  it  serves  to  indicate  that  prosti- 
tutes tend  to  approximate  to  the  type  which,  as  was  shown  in  the 
previous  volume,  there  is  reason  to  regard  as  specially  indicative 
of  developed  sexuality.  It  is,  however,  unnecessary  to  discuss 
this  question  until  our  anthropometrical  knowledge  of  prostitutes 
is  more  extended  and  precise. 

3.  The  Moral  Justification  of  Prostitution. — There  are  and 
always  have  been  moralists — many  of  them  people  whose  opinions 
are  deserving  of  the  most  serious  respect — who  consider  that, 


1  This  point  has  been  discussed  by  Bloch,  Sexualleben  unserer  Zeit, 
Ch.  XIII. 

2  Various  series  of  observations  are  summarized  by  Lombroso  and 
Ferrero,  La  Donna  Delinquente,  1893,  Part  III,  cap.  IV. 


PKOSTITUTION'.  281 

allowing  for  the  need  of  improved  hygienic  conditions,  the 
existence  of  prostitution  presents  no  serious  problem  for  solution. 
It  is,  at  most,  they  say,  a  necessary  evil,  and,  at  best,  a  beneficent 
institution,  the  bulwark  of  the  home,  the  inevitable  reverse  of 
which  monogamy  is  the  obverse.  "The  immoral  guardian  of 
public  morality,"  is  the  definition  of  prostitutes  given  by  one 
writer,  who  takes  the  humble  view  of  the  matter,  and  another, 
taking  the  loftier  ground,  writes :  "The  prostitute  fulfils  a  social 
mission.  She  is  the  guardian  of  virginal  modesty,  the  channel 
to  carry  off  adulterous  desire,  the  protector  of  matrons  who  fear 
late  maternity ;  it  is  her  part  to  act  as  the  shield  of  the  family." 
"Female  Deeii,"  said  Balzac  in  his  Physiologie  du  Manage  of 
prostitutes,  "they  sacrifice  themselves  for  the  republic  and  make 
of  their  bodies  a  rampart  for  the  protection  of  respectable 
families/'  In  the  same  way  Schopenhauer  called  prostitutes 
'Tinman  sacrifices  on  the  altar  of  monogamy."  Lecky,  again,  in 
an  oft-quoted  passage  of  rhetoric,1  may  be  said  to  combine  both 
the  higher  and  the  lower  view  of  the  prostitute's  mission  in 
human  society,  to  which  he  even  seeks  to  give  a  hieratic  character. 
"The  supreme  type  of  vice,"  he  declared,  "she  is  ultimately  the 
most  efficient  guardian  of  virtue.  But  for  her,  the  unchallenged 
purity  of  countless  happy  homes  would  be  polluted,  and  not  a 
few  who,  in  the  pride  of  their  untempted  chastity,  think  of  her 
with  an  indignant  shudder,  would  have  known  the  agony  of 
remorse  and  of  despair.  On  that  one  degraded  and  ignoble  form 
are  concentrated  the  passions  that  might  have  filled  the  world 
with  shame.  She  remains,  while  creeds  and  civilizations  rise  and 
fall,  the  eternal  priestess  of  humanity,  blasted  for  the  sins  of  the 
people."2 

I  am  not  aware  that  the  Greeks  were  greatly  concerned  with 


1  History  of  European  Morals,  vol.  iii,  p.  283. 

2  Similarly  Lord  Morley  has  written  {Diderot,  vol.  ii,  p.  20)  :  "The 
purity  of  the  family,  so  lovely  and  dear  as  it  is,  has  still  only  been 
secured  hitherto  by  retaining  a  vast  and  dolorous  host  of  female  out- 
casts ....  upon  whose  heads,  as  upon  the  scapegoat  of  the 
Hebrew  ordinance,  we  put  all  the  iniquities  of  the  children  of  the  house, 
and  all  their  transgressions  in  all  their  sins,  and  then  banish  them  with 
maledictions  into  the  foul  outer  wilderness  and  the  land  not  inhabited." 


282  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   SEX. 

the  moral  justification  of  prostitution.  They  had  not  allowed 
it  to  assume  very  offensive  forms  and  for  the  most  part  they 
were  content  to  accept  it.  The  Romans  usually  accepted  it,  too, 
but,  we  gather,  not  quite  so  easily.  There  was  an  austerely 
serious,  almost  Puritanic,  spirit  in  the  Eomans  of  the  old  stock 
and  they  seem  sometimes  to  have  felt  the  need  to  assure  them- 
selves that  prostitution  really  was  morally  justifiable.  It  is 
significant  to  note  that  they  were  accustomed  to  remember  that 
Cato  was  said  to  have  expressed  satisfaction  on  seeing  a  man 
emerge  from  a  brothel,  for  otherwise  he  might  have  gone  to  lie 
with  his  neighbor's  wife.1 

The  social  necessity  of  prostitution  is  the  most  ancient  of 
all  the  arguments  of  moralists  in  favor  of  the  toleration  of  pros- 
titutes; and  if  we  accept  the  eternal  validity  of  the  marriage 
system  with  which  prostitution  developed,  and  of  the  theoretical 
morality  based  on  that  system,  this  is  an  exceedingly  forcible,  if 
not  an  unanswerable,  argument. 

The  advent  of  ChristianhVy,  with  its  special  attitude  towards 
the  "flesh,"  necessarily  caused  an  enormous  increase  of  attention 
to  the  moral  aspects  of  prostitution.  When  prostitution  was  not 
morally  denounced,  it  became  clearly  necessary  to  morally 
justify  it;  it  was  impossible  for  a  Church,  whose  ideals  were 
more  or  less  ascetic,  to  be  benevolently  indifferent  in  such  a 
matter.  As  a  rule  we  seem  to  find  throughout  that  while  the 
more  independent  and  irresponsible  divines  take  the  side  of 
denunciation,  those  theologians  who  have  had  thrust  upon  them 
the  grave  responsibilities  of  ecclesiastical  statesmanship  have 
rather  tended  towards  the  reluctant  moral  justification  of  prosti- 
tution. Of  this  we  have  an  example  of  the  first  importance  in 
St.  Augustine,  after  St.  Paul  the  chief  builder  of  the  Christian 
Church.  In  a  treatise  written  in  386  to  justify  the  Divine  regu- 
lation of  the  world,  we  find  him  declaring  that  just  as  the 
executioner,  however  repulsive  he  may  be,  occupies  a  necessary 
place  in  society,  so  the  prostitute  and  her  like,  however  sordid 
and  ugly  and  wicked  they  may  be,  are  equally  necessary ;  remove 


1  Horace,  Satires,  lib.  i,  2. 


PROSTITUTION.  283 

prostitutes  from  human  affairs  and  you  would  pollute  the  world 
with  lust :  "Aufer  meretrices  de  rebus  huinanis,  turbaveris  omnia 
libidinibus."1  Aquinas,  the  only  theological  thinker  of  Christen- 
dom who  can  be  named  with  Augustine,  was  of  the  same  mind 
with  him  on  this  question  of  prostitution.  He  maintained  the 
sinfulness  of  fornication  but  he  accepted  the  necessity  of  prosti- 
tution as  a  beneficial  part  of  the  social  structure,  comparing  it  to 
the  sewers  which  keep  a  palace  pure.2  "Prostitution  in  towns  is 
like  the  sewer  in  a  palace;  take  away  the  sewers  and  the  palace 
becomes  an  impure  and  stinking  place."  Liguori,  the  most 
influential  theologian  of  more  modern  times,  was  of  the  like 
opinion. 

This  wavering  and  semi-indulgent  attitude  towards  prosti- 
tution was  indeed  generally  maintained  by  theologians.  Some, 
following  Augustine  and  Aquinas,  would  permit  prostitution  for 
the  avoidance  of  greater  evils ;  others  were  altogether  opposed  to 
it ;  others,  again,  would  allow  it  in  towns  but  nowhere  else.  It 
was,  however,  universally  held  by  theologians  that  the  prostitute 
has  a  right  to  her  wages,  and  is  not  obliged  to  make  restitution.3 
The  earlier  Christian  moralists  found  no  difficulty  in  maintaining 
that  there  is  no  sin  in  renting  a  house  to  a  prostitute  for  the 
purposes  of  her  trade;  absolution  was  always  granted  for  this 
and  abstention  not  required.4  Fornication,  however,  always 
remained  a  sin,  and  from  the  twelfth  century  onwards  the  Church 
made  a  series  of  organized  attempts  to  reclaim  prostitutes.  All 
Catholic  theologians  hold  that  a  prostitute  is  bound  to  confess 
the  sin  of  prostitution,  and  most,  though  not  all,  theologians  have 
believed  that  a  man  also  must  confess  intercourse  with  a  prosti- 
tute. At  the  same  time,  while  there  was  a  certain  indulgence  to 
the  prostitute  herself,  the  Church  was  always  very  severe  on  those 


i  Augustine,  De  Ordine,  Bk.  II,  Ch.  IV. 

2  De  Regimine  Principtim,  ( Opuscula  XX ) ,  lib.  iv,  cap.  XIV.  I  am 
indebted  to  the  Rev.  H.  Northcote  for  the  reference  to  the  precise  place 
where  this  statement  occurs;    it  is  usually  quoted  more  vaguely. 

3  Lea,  History  of  Auricular  Confession,  vol.  ii,  p.  69.  There  was 
even,  it  seems,  an  eccentric  decision  of  the  Salamanca  theologians  that 
a  nun  might  so  receive  money,  "licite  et  valide." 

4  Lea,  op.  cit.,  vol.  ii,  pp.  263,  399. 


284  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

who  lived  on  the  profits  of  promoting  prostitution,  on  the  lenones. 
Thus  the  Council  of  Elvira,  which  was  ready  to  receive  without 
penance  the  prostitute  who  married,  refused  reconciliation,  even 
at  death,  to  persons  who  had  been  guilty  of  lenocinium.1 

Protestantism,  in  this  as  in  many  other  matters  of  sexual 
morality,  having  abandoned  the  confessional,  was  usually  able  to 
escape  the  necessity  for  any  definite  and  responsible  utterances 
concerning  the  moral  status  of  prostitution.  When  it  expressed 
any  opinion,  or  sought  to  initiate  any  practical  action,  it  naturally 
founded  itself  on  the  Biblical  injunctions  against  fornication,  as 
expressed  by  St.  Paul,  and  showed  no  mercy  for  prostitutes  and 
no  toleration  for  prostitution.  This  attitude,  which  was  that  of 
the  Puritans,  was  the  more  easy  since  in  Protestant  countries, 
with  the  exception  of  special  districts  at  special  periods — such  as 
Geneva  and  New  England  in  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth 
centuries — theologians  have  in  these  matters  been  called  upon  to 
furnish  religious  exhortation  rather  than  to  carry  out  practical 
policies.  The  latter  task  they  have  left  to  others,  and  a  certain 
confusion  and  uncertainty  has  thus  often  arisen  in  the  lay 
Protestant  mind.  This  attitude  in  a  thoughtful  and  serious 
writer,  is  well  illustrated  in  England  by  Burton,  writing  a  century 
after  the  Eeformation.  He  refers  with  mitigated  approval  to 
"our  Pseudo-Catholics,"  who  are  severe  with  adultery  but 
indulgent  to  fornication,  being  perhaps  of  Cato's  mind  that  it 
should  be  encouraged  to  avoid  worse  mischiefs  at  home,  and  who 
holds  brothels  "as  necessary  as  churches"  and  "have  whole 
Colleges  of  Courtesans  in  their  towns  and  cities."  "They  hold  it 
impossible,"  he  continues,  "for  idle  persons,  young,  rich  and 
lusty,  so  many  servants,  monks,  friars,  to  live  honest,  too  tyran- 
nical a  burden  to  compel  them  to  be  chaste,  and  most  unfit  to 
suffer  poor  men,  younger  brothers  and  soldiers  at  all  to  marry, 
as  also  diseased  persons,  votaries,  priests,  servants.  Therefore  as 
well  to  keep  and  ease  the  one  as  the  other,  they  tolerate  and  wink 
at  these  kind  of  brothel-houses  and  stews.  Many  probable  argu- 
ments they  have  to  prove  the  lawfulness,  the  necessity,  and  a 


1  Rabutaux,  De  la  Prostitution  en  Europe,  pp.  22  et  seq. 


PEOSTITUTION.  285 

toleration  of  them,  as  of  usery;   and  without  question  in  policy 
they  are  not  to  be  contradicted,  but  altogether  in  religion/'1 

It  was  not  until  the  beginning  of  the  following  century  that 
the  ancient  argument  of  St.  Augustine  for  the  moral  justification 
of  prostitution  was  boldly  and  decisively  stated  in  Protestant 
England,  by  Bernard  Mandeville  in  his  Fable  of  the  Bees,  and  at 
its  first  promulgation  it  seemed  so  offensive  to  the  public  mind 
that  the  book  was  suppressed.  "If  courtesans  and  strumpets  were 
to  be  prosecuted  with  as  much  rigor  as  some  silly  people  would 
have  it/'  Mandeville  wrote,  "what  locks  or  bars  would  be  sufficient 
to  preserve  the  honor  of  our  wives  and  daughters?  .... 
It  is  manifest  that  there  is  a  necessity  of  sacrificing  one  part  of 
womankind  to  preserve  the  other,  and  prevent  a  filthiness  of  a 
more  heinous  nature.  From  whence  I  think  I  may  justly  con- 
clude that  chastity  may  be  supported  by  incontinence,  and  the 
best  of  virtues  want  the  assistance  of  the  worst  of  vices."2  After 
Mandeville's  time  this  view  of  prostitution  began  to  become  com- 
mon in  Protestant  as  well  as  in  other  countries,  though  it  was 
not  usually  so  clearly  expressed. 

It  may  be  of  interest  to  gather  together  a  few  more  modern 
examples  of  statements  brought  forward  for  the  moral  justification  of 
prostitution. 

Thus  in  France  Meusnier  de  Querlon,  in  his  story  of  Psaphion, 
written  in  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century,  puts  into  the  mouth  of 
a  Greek  courtesan  many  interesting  reflections  concerning  the  life  and 
position  of  the  prostitute.  She  defends  her  profession  with  much  skill, 
and  argues  that  while  men  imagine  that  prostitutes  are  merely  the 
despised  victims  of  their  pleasures,  these  would-be  tyrants  are  really 
dupes  who  are  ministering  to  the  needs  of  the  women  they  trample 
beneath  their  feet,  and  themselves  equally  deserve  the  contempt  they 
bestow.  "We  return  disgust  for  disgust,  as  they  must  surely  perceive. 
We  often  abandon  to  them  merely  a  statue,  and  while  inflamed  by  their 
own  desires  they  consume  themselves  on  insensible  charms,  our  tranquil 
coldness  leisurely  enjoys  their  sensibility.     Then  it  is  we  resume  all  our 


i  Burton,  Anatomy  of  Melancholy,  Part  III,  Sect.  Ill,  Mem.  IV, 
Subs.  II. 

2B.  Mandeville,  Remarks  to  Fable  of  the  Bees,  1714,  pp.  93-9;  cf. 
P.  Sakmann,  Bernard,  de  Mandeville,  pp.  101-4. 


286  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   SEX. 

rights.  A  little  Lot  blood  has  brought  these  proud  creatures  to  our  feet, 
and  rendered  us  mistresses  of  their  fate.  On  which  side,  I  ask,  is  the 
advantage  ?"  But  all  men,  she  adds,  are  not  so  unjust  towards  the  pros- 
titute, and  she  proceeds  to  pronounce  a  eulogy,  not  without  a  slight 
touch  of  irony  in  it,  of  the  utility,  facility,  and  convenience  of  the 
brothel. 

A  large  number  of  the  modern  writers  on  prostitution  insist  on  its 
socially  beneficial  character.  Thus  Charles  Richard  concludes  his  book 
on  the  subject  with  the  words:  "The  conduct  of  society  with  regard  to 
prostitution  must  proceed  from  the  principle  of  gratitude  without  false 
shame  for  its  utility,  and  compassion  for  the  poor  creatures  at  whose 
expense  this  is  attained"  (La  Prostitution  devant  le  PhilosopJie,  1882, 
p.  171).  "To  make  marriage  permanent  is  to  make  it  difficult,"  an 
American  medical  writer  observes;  "to  make  it  difficult  is  to  defer  it; 
to  defer  it  is  to  maintain  in  the  community  an  increasing  number  of 
sexually  perfect  individuals,  with  normal,  or,  in  cases  where  repression 
is  prolonged,  excessive  sexual  appetites.  The  social  evil  is  the  natural 
outcome  of  the  physical  nature  of  man,  his  inherited  impulses,  and  the 
artificial  conditions  under  which  he  is  compelled  to  live"  ("The  Social 
Evil,"  Medicine,  August  and  September,  1906).  Woods  Hutchinson, 
while  speaking  with  strong  disapproval  of  prostitution  and  regarding 
prostitutes  as  "the  worst  specimens  of  the  sex,"  yet  regards  prostitution 
as  a  social  agency  of  the  highest  value.  "From  a  medico-economic  point 
of  view  I  venture  to  claim  it  as  one  of  the  grand  selective  and  eliminative 
agencies  of  nature,  and  of  highest  value  to  the  community.  It  may  be 
roughly  characterized  as  a  safety  valve  for  the  institution  of  marriage" 
(The  Gospel  According  to  Darwin,  p.  193;  cf.  the  same  author's  article 
on  "The  Economics  of  Prostitution,"  summarized  in  Boston  Medical  and 
Surgical  Journal,  November  21,  1895).  Adolf  Gerson,  in  a  somewhat 
similar  spirit,  argues  ("Die  Ursache  der  Prostitution,"  Sexual-Probleme, 
September,  1908)  that  "prostitution  is  one  of  the  means  used  by  Nature 
to  limit  the  procreative  activity  of  men,  and  especially  to  postpone  the 
period  of  sexual  maturity."  Molinari  considers  that  the  social  benefits 
of  prostitution  have  been  manifested  in  various  ways  from  the  first;  by 
sterilizing,  for  instance,  the  more  excessive  manifestations  of  the  sexual 
impulse  prostitution  suppressed  the  necessity  for  the  infanticide  of  super- 
fluous children,  and  led  to  the  prohibition  of  that  primitive  method  of 
limiting  the  population  (G.  de  Molinari,  La  Viriculture,  p.  45).  In  quite 
another  way  than  that  mentioned  by  Molinari,  prostitution  has  even  in 
very  recent  times  led  to  the  abandonment  of  infanticide.  In  the  Chinese 
province  of  Ping- Yang,  Matignon  states,  it  was  usual  not  many  years 
ago  for  poor  parents  to  kill  forty  per  cent,  of  the  girl  children,  or  even 
all  of  them,  at  birth,  for  they  were  too  expensive  to  rear  and  brought 
nothing  in,  since  men  who  wished  to  marry  could  easily  obtain  a  wife 


PROSTITUTION.  287 

in  the  neighboring  province  of  Wenchu,  where  women  were  very  easy  to 
obtain.  Now,  however,  the  line  of  steamships  along  the  coast  makes  it 
very  easy  for  girls  to  reach  the  brothels  of  Shang-Hai,  where  they  can 
earn  money  for  their  families;  the  custom  of  killing  them  has  therefore 
died  out  (Matignon,  Archives  d' Anthropologic  Criminelle,  1896,  p.  ?2). 
"Under  present  conditions,"  writes  Dr.  F.  Erhard  ("Auch  ein  Wort  zur 
Ehereform,"  Geschlecht  und  Gesellschafb,  Jahrgang  I,  Heft  9 ) ,  "prosti- 
tution (in  the  broadest  sense,  including  free  relationships)  is  necessary 
in  order  that  young  men  may,  in  some  degree,  learn  to  know  women,  for 
conventional  conversation  cannot  suffice  for  this;  an  exact  knowledge  of 
feminine  thought  and  action  is,  however,  necessary  for  a  proper  choice, 
since  it  is  seldom  possible  to  rely  on  the  certainty  of  instinct.  It  is  good 
also  that  men  should  wear  off  their  horns  before  marriage,  for  the  poly- 
gamous tendency  will  break  through  somewhere.  Prostitution  will  only 
spoil  those  men  in  whom  there  is  not  much  to  spoil,  and  if  the  desire 
for  marriage  is  thus  lost,  the  man's  unbegotten  children  may  have  cause 
to  thank  him."  Neisser,  Nacke,  and  many  others,  have  pleaded  for 
prostitution,  and  even  for  brothels,  as  "necessary  evils." 

It  is  scarcely  necessary  to  add  that  many,  among  even  the  strongest 
upholders  of  the  moral  advantages  of  prostitution,  believe  that  some 
improvement  in  method  is  still  desirable.  Thus  Berault  looks  forward 
to  a  time  when  regulated  brothels  will  become  less  contemptible.  Vari- 
ous improvements  may,  he  thinks,  in  the  near  future,  "deprive  them  of 
the  barbarous  attributes  which  mark  them  out  for  the  opprobrium  of  the 
skeptical  or  ignorant  multitude,  while  their  recognizable  advantages  will 
put  an  end  to  the  contempt  aroused  by  their  cynical  aspect"  (La  Maison 
de  ToUrance,  Thgse  de  Paris,  1904)   . 

4.  The  Civilizational  Value  of  Prostitution. — The  moral 
argument  for  prostitution  is  based  on  the  belief  that  our 
marriage  system  is  so  infinitely  precious  that  an  institution 
which  serves  as  its  buttress  must  be  kept  in  existence,  however 
ugly  or  otherwise  objectionable  it  may  in  itself  be.  There 
is,  however,  another  argument  in  support  of  prostitution  which 
scarcely  receives  the  emphasis  it  deserves.  I  refer  to  its  influence 
in  adding  an  element,  in  some  form  or  another  necessary,  of 
gaiety  and  variety  to  the  ordered  complexity  of  modern  life,  a 
relief  from  the  monotony  of  its  mechanical  routine,  a  distraction 
from  its  dull  and  respectable  monotony.  This  is  distinct  from 
the  more  specific  function  of  prostitution  as  an  outlet  for 
superfluous  sexual  energy,  and  may  even  affect  those  who  have 


288  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

little  or  no  commerce  with  prostitutes.  This  element  may  be 
said  to  constitute  the  civilizational  value  of  prostitution. 

It  is  not  merely  the  general  conditions  of  civilization,  but 
more  specifically  the  conditions  of  urban  life,  which  make  this 
factor  insistent.  Urban  life  imposes  by  the  stress  of  competition 
a  very  severe  and  exacting  routine  of  dull  work.  At  the  same 
time  it  makes  men  and  women  more  sensitive  to  new  impressions, 
more  enamored  of  excitement  and  change.  It  multiplies  the 
opportunities  of  social  intercourse;  it  decreases  the  chances  of 
detection  of  illegitimate  intercourse  while  at  the  same  time  it 
makes  marriage  more  difficult,  for,  by  heightening  social  ambi- 
tions and  increasing  the  expenses  of  living,  it  postpones  the  time 
when  a  home  can  be  created.  Urban  life  delays  marriage  and  yet 
renders  the  substitutes  for  marriage  more  imperative.1 

There  cannot  be  the  slightest  doubt  that  it  is  this  motive — ■ 
the  effort  to  supplement  the  imperfect  opportunities  for  self- 
development  offered  by  our  restrained,  mechanical,  and  laborious 
civilization — which  plays  one  of  the  chief  parts  in  inducing 
women  to  adopt,  temporarily  or  permanently,  a  prostitute's  life. 
We  have  seen  that  the  economic  factor  is  not,  as  was  once  sup- 
posed, by  any  means  predominant  in  this  choice.  Nor,  again,  is 
there  any  reason  to  suppose  that  an  over-mastering  sexual  impulse 
is  a  leading  factor.  But  a  large  number  of  young  women  turn 
instinctively  to  a  life  of  prostitution  because  they  are  moved  by 
an  obscure  impulse  which  they  can  scarcely  define  to  themselves  or 
express,  and  are  often  ashamed  to  confess.  It  is,  therefore,  sur- 
prising that  this  motive  should  find  so  large  a  place  even  in  the 
formal  statistics  of  the  factors  of  prostitution.  Merrick,  in 
London,  found  that  5000,  or  nearly  a  third,  of  the  prostitutes  he 
investigated,  voluntarily  gave  up  home  or  situation  "for  a  life  of 
pleasure,"  and  he  puts  this  at  the  head  of  the  causes  of  prostitu- 


1  These  conditions  favor  temporary  free  unions,  but  they  also  favor 
prostitution.  The  reason  is,  according  to  Adolf  Gerson  (Sexual- 
Probleme,  September,  1908),  that  the  woman  of  good  class  will  not  have 
free  unions.  Partly  moved  by  moral  traditions,  and  partly  by  the  feel- 
ing that  a  man  should  be  legally  her  property,  she  will  not  give  herself 
out  of  love  to  a  man;  and  he  therefore  turns  to  the  lower-class  woman 
who  gives  herself  for  money. 


PROSTITUTION".  289 

tion.1  In  America  Sanger  found  that  "inclination"  came  almost 
at  the  head  of  the  causes  of  prostitution,  while  Woods  Hutchinson 
found  "love  of  display,  luxury  and  idleness"  by  far  at  the  head. 
"Disgusted  and  wearied  with  work"  is  the  reason  assigned  by  a 
large  number  of  Belgian  girls  when  stating  to  the  police  their 
wish  to  be  enrolled  as  prostitutes.  In  Italy  a  similar  motive  is 
estimated  to  play  an  important  part..  In  Eussia  "desire  for 
amusement"  comes  second  among  the  causes  of  prostitution. 
There  can,  I  think,  be  little  doubt  that,  as  a  thoughtful  student 
of  London  life  has  concluded,  the  problem  of  prostitution  is  "at 
bottom  a  mad  and  irresistible  craving  for  excitement,  a  serious 
and  wilful  revolt  against  the  monotony  of  commonplace  ideals, 
and  the  uninspired  drudgery  of  everyday  life."2  It  is  this  factor 
of  prostitution,  we  may  reasonably  conclude,  which  is  mainly 
responsible  for  the  fact,  pointed  out  by  F.  Schiller,3  that  with 
the  development  of  civilization  the  supply  of  prostitutes  tends  to 
outgrow  the  demand. 

Charles  Booth  seems  to  be  of  the  same  opinion,  and  quotes  (Life 
and  Labor  of  the  People,  Third  Series,  vol.  vii,  p.  364)  from  a  Rescue 
Committee  Report:  "The  popular  idea  is,  that  these  women  are  eager 
to  leave  a  life  of  sin.  The  plain  and  simple  truth  is  that,  for  the  most 
part,  they  have  no  desire  at  all  to  be  rescued.  So  many  of  these  women 
do  not,  and  will  not,  regard  prostitution  as  a  sin.  'I  am  taken  out  to 
dinner  and  to  some  place  of  amusement  every  night;  why  should  I  give 
it  up  ?' "  Merrick,  who  found  that  five  per  cent,  of  14,000  prostitutes 
who  passed  through  Millbank  Prison,  were  accustomed  to  combine  re- 
ligious observance  with  the  practice  of  their  profession,  also  remarks  in 
regard  to  their  feelings  about  morality :  "I  am  convinced  that  there  are 
many  poor  men  and  women  who  do  not  in  the  least  understand  what  is 

1  Many  girls,  said  Ellice  Hopkins,  get  into  mischief  merely  because 
they  have  in  them  an  element  of  the  "black  kitten,"  which  must  frolic 
and  play,  but  has  no  desire  to  get  into  danger.  "Do  you  not  think  it  a 
little  hard,"  she  added,  "that  men  should  have  dug  by  the  side  of  her 
foolish  dancing  feet  a  bottomless  pit,  and  that  she  cannot  have  her  jump 
and  fun  in  safety,  and  put  on  her  fine  feathers  like  the  silly  bird-witted 
thing  she  is,  without  a  single  false  step  dashing  her  over  the  brink,  and 
leaving  her  with  the  very  womanhood  dashed  out  of  her?" 

2  A.  Sherwell,  Life  in  West  London,  1897,  Ch.  V. 

3  As  quoted  by  Bloch,  Seooualleben  Unserer  Zeit,  p.  358.  In  Berlin 
during  recent  years  the  number  of  prostitutes  has  increased  at  nearly 
double  the  rate  at  which  the  general  population  has  increased.  It  is  no 
doubt  probable  that  the  supply  tends  to  increase  the  demand. 

19 


290  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

implied  in  the  term  'immorality.'  Out  of  courtesy  to  you,  they  may 
assent  to  what  you  say,  but  they  do  not  comprehend  your  meaning  when 
you  talk  of  virtue  or  purity;  you  are  simply  talking  over  their  heads" 
(Merrick,  op.  cit.,  p.  28).  The  same  atttitude  may  be  found  among 
prostitutes  everywhere.  In  Italy  Ferriani  mentions  a  girl  of  fifteen  who, 
when  accused  of  indecency  with  a  man  in  a  public  garden,  denied  with 
tears  and  much  indignation.  He  finally  induced  her  to  confess,  and  then 
asked  her:  "Why  did  you  try  to  make  me  believe  you  were  a  good 
girl?"  She  hesitated,  smiled,  and  said:  "Because  they  say  girls  ought 
not  to  do  what  I  do,  but  ought  to  work.  But  I  am  what  I  am,  and  it 
is  no  concern  of  theirs."  This  attitude  is  often  more  than  an  instinctive 
feeling;  in  intelligent  prostitutes  it  frequently  becomes  a  reasoned  con- 
viction. "I  can  bear  everything,  if  so  it  must  be,"  wrote  the  author  of 
the  Tageouch  einer  Verlorenen  (p.  291),  "even  serious  and  honorable 
contempt,  but  I  cannot  bear  scorn.  Contempt — yes,  if  it  is  justified.  If 
a  poor  and  pretty  girl  with  sick  and  bitter  heart  stands  alone  in  life,  cast 
off,  with  temptations  and  seductions  offering  on  every  side,  and,  in  spite 
of  that,  out  of  inner  conviction  she  chooses  the  grey  and  monotonous 
path  of  renunciation  and  middle-class  morality,  I  recognize  in  that  girl 
a  personality,  who  has  a  certain  justification  in  looking  down  with  con- 
temptuous pity  on  weaker  girls.  But  those  geese  who,  under  the  eyes 
of  their  shepherds  and  life-long  owners,  have  always  been  pastured  in 
smooth  green  fields,  have  certainly  no  right  to  laugh  scornfully  at  others 
who  have  not  been  so  fortunate."  Nor  must  it  be  supposed  that. there 
is  necessarily  any  sophistry  in  the  prostitute's  justification  of  herself. 
Some  of  our  best  thinkers  and  observers  have  reached  a  conclusion  that 
is  not  dissimilar.  "The  actual  conditions  of  society  are  opposed  to  any 
high  moral  feeling  in  women,"  Marro  observes  (La  Puoerta,  p.  462),  "for 
between  those  who  sell  themselves  to  prostitution  and  those  who  sell 
themselves  to  marriage,  the  only  difference  is  in  price  and  duration  of 
the  contract." 

We  have  already  seen  how  very  large  a  part  in  prostitution 
is  furnished  by  those  who  have  left  domestic  service  to  adopt  this 
life  (ante  p.  264) .  It  is  not  difficult  to  find  in  this  fact  evidence 
of  the  kind  of  impulse  which  impels  a  woman  to  adopt  the  career 
of  prostitution.  "The  servant,  in  our  society  of  equality/'  wrote 
Goncourt,  recalling  somewhat  earlier  days  when  she  was  often 
admitted  to  a  place  in  the  family  life,  "has  become  nothing  but  a 
paid  pariah,  a  machine  for  doing  household  work,  and  is  no  longer 
allowed  to  share  the  employer's  human  life."1     And  in  England, 


1  Goncourt,  Journal,  vol.  iii,  p.  49. 


PROSTITUTION.  291 

even  half  a  century  ago,  we  already  find  the  same  statements 
concerning  the  servant's  position :  "domestic  service  is  a  complete 
slavery,"  with  early  hours  and  late  hours,  and  constant  running 
up  and  down  stairs  till  her  legs  are  swollen;  "an  amount  of 
ingenuity  appears  too  often  to  be  exercised,  worthy  of  a  better 
cause,  in  obtaining  the  largest  possible  amount  of  labor  out  of  the 
domestic  machine" ;  in  addition  she  is  "a  kind  of  lightning  con- 
ductor," to  receive  the  ill-temper  and  morbid  feelings  of  her 
mistress  and  the  young  ladies ;  so  that,  as  some  have  said,  "I  felt 
so  miserable  I  did  not  care  what  became  of  me,  I  wished  I  was 
dead."1  The  servant  is  deprived  of  all  human  relationships ;  she 
must  not  betray  the  existence  of  any  simple  impulse,  or  natural 
need.  At  the  same  time  she  lives  on  the  fringe  of  luxury;  she 
is  surrounded  by  the  tantalizing  visions  of  pleasure  and  amuse- 
ment for  which  her  fresh  young  nature  craves.2  It  is  not  sur- 
prising that,  repelled  by  unrelieved  drudgery  and  attracted  by 
idle  luxury,  she  should  take  the  plunge  which  will  alone  enable 
her  to  enjoy  the  glittering  aspects  of  civilization  which  seem  so 
desirable  to  her.3 

It  is  sometimes  stated  that  the  prevalence  of  prostitution  among 
girls  who  were  formerly  servants  is  due  to  the  immense  numbers  of 
servants  who  are  seduced  by  their  masters  or  the  young  men  of  the 
family,  and  are  thus  forced  on  to  the  streets.  Undoubtedly  in  a  certain 
proportion  of  cases,  perhaps  sometimes  a  fairly  considerable  proportion, 
this  is  a  decisive  factor  in  the  matter,  but  it  scarcely  seems  to  be  the 
chief  factor.  The  existence  of  relationships  between  servants  and  mas- 
ters, it  must  be  remembered,  by  no  means  necessarily  implies  seduction. 


i  Vanderkiste,  The  Dens  of  London,  1854,  p.  242. 

2  Bonger  (Criminalite  et  Conditions  Economiques,  p.  406)  refers  to 
the  prevalence  of  prostitution  among  dressmakers  and  milliners,  as  well 
as  among  servants,  as  showing  the  influence  of  contact  with  luxury,  and 
adds  that  the  rich  women,  who  look  down  on  prostitution,  do  not  always 
realize  that  they  are  themselves  an  important  factor  of  prostitution,  both 
by  their  luxury  and  their  idleness;  while  they  do  not  seem  to  be  aware 
that  they  would  themselves  act  in  the  same  way  if  placed  under  the  same 
conditions. 

3  H.  Lippert,  in  his  book  on  prostitution  in  Hamburg,  laid  much 
stress  on  the  craving  for  dress  and  adornment  as  a  factor  of  prostitution, 
and  Bloeh  (Das  Sexualleben  unsurer  Zeit,  p.  372)  considers  that  this 
factor  is  usually  underestimated,  and  that  it  exerts  an  especially  power- 
ful influence  on  servants. 


292  PSYCHOLOGY   OF    SEX. 

In  a  large  number  of  cases  the  servant  in  a  household  is,  in  sexual  mat- 
ters, the  teacher  rather  than  the  pupil.  (In  ''The  Sexual  Impulse  in 
Women,"  in  the  third  volume  of  these  Studies,  I  have  discussed  the  part 
played  by  servants  as  sexual  initiators  of  the  young  boys  in  the  house- 
holds in  which  they  are  placed.)  The  more  precise  statistics  of  the 
causes  of  prostitution  seldom  assign  seduction  as  the  main  determining 
factor  in  more  than  about  twenty  per  cent,  of  cases,  though  this  is 
obviously  one  of  the  most  easily  avowable  motives  ( see  ante,  p.  256 ) . 
Seduction  by  any  kind  of  employer  constitutes  only  a  proportion  (usually 
less  than  half)  even  of  these  cases.  The  special  case  of  seduction  of 
servants  by  masters  can  thus  play  no  very  considerable  part  as  a  factor 
of  prostitution. 

The  statistics  of  the  parentage  of  illegitimate  children  have  some 
bearing  on  this  question.  In  a  series  of  180  unmarried  mothers  assisted 
by  the  Berlin  Bund  fur  Mutterschutz,  particulars  are  given  of  the 
occupations  both  of  the  mothers,  and,  as  far  as  possible,  of  the  fathers. 
The  former  were  one-third  servant-girls,  and  the  great  majority  of  the 
remainder  assistants  in  trades  or  girls  carrying  on  work  at  home.  At 
the  head  of  the  fathers  (among  120  cases)  came  artisans  (33),  followed 
by  tradespeople  (22)  ;  only  a  small  proportion  (20  to  25)  could  be 
described  as  "gentlemen,"  and  even  this  proportion  loses  some  of  its 
significance  when  it  is  pointed  out  that  some  of  the  girls  were  also  of 
the  middle-class;  in  nineteen  cases  the  fathers  were  married  men  (Mut- 
terschuts,  January,  1907,  p.  45). 

Most  authorities  in  most  countries  are  of  opinion  that  girls  who 
eventually  (usually  between  the  ages  of  fifteen  and  twenty)  become 
prostitutes  have  lost  their  virginity  at  an  early  age,  and  in  the  great 
majority  of  cases  through  men  of  their  own  class.  "The  girl  of  the  peo- 
ple falls  by  the  people,"  stated  Reuss  in  France  (La  Prostitution,  p. 
41).  "It  is  her  like,  workers  like  herself,  who  have  the  first  fruits  of 
her  beauty  and  virginity.  The  man  of  the  world  who  covers  her  with 
gold  and  jewels  only  has  tteir  leavings."  Martineau,  again  (De  la 
Prostitution  Clandestine,  1885),  showed  that  prostitutes  are  usually 
deflowered  by  men  of  their  own  class.  And  Jeannel,  in  Bordeaux,  found 
reason  for  believing  that  it  is  not  chiefly  their  masters  who  lead  servants 
astray;  they  often  go  into  service  because  they  have  been  seduced  in  the 
country,  while  lazy,  greedy,  and  unintelligent  girls  are  sent  from  the 
country  into  the  town  to  service.  In  Edinburgh,  W.  Tait  (Magdalenism, 
1842)  found  that  soldiers  more  than  any  other  class  in  the  community 
are  the  seducers  of  women,  the  Highlanders  being  especially  notorious  in 
this  respect.  Soldiers  have  this  reputation  everywhere,  and  in  Germany 
especially  it  is  constantly  found  that  the  presence  of  the  soldiery  in  a 
country  district,  as  at  the  annual  manoeuvres,  is  the  cause  of  unchastity 
and  illegitimate  births ;   it  is  so  also  in  Austria,  where,  long  ago,  Gross- 


PKOSTITUTION.  293 

Hoffinger  stated  that  soldiers  were  responsible  for  at  least  a  third  of  all 
illegitimate  births,  a  share  out  of  all  proportion  to  their  numbers.  In 
Italy,  Marro,  investigating  the  occasion  of  the  loss  of  virginity  in  twenty- 
two  prostitutes,  found  that  ten  gave  themselves  more  or  less  spontane- 
ously to  lovers  or  masters,  ten  yielded  in  the  expectation  of  marriage, 
and  two  were  outraged  {La  Pubertd,  p.  461).  The  loss  of  virginity, 
Marro  adds,  though  it  may  not  be  the  direct  cause  of  prostitution,  often 
leads  on  to  it.  "When  a  door  has  once  been  broken  in,"  a  prostitute  said 
to  him,  "it  is  difficult  to  keep  it  closed."  In  Sardinia,  as  A.  Mantegazza 
and  Ciuffo  found,  prostitutes  are  very  largely  servants  from  the  country 
who  have  already  been  deflowered  by  men  of  their  own  class. 

This  eivilizational  factor  of  prostitution,  the  influence  of 
luxury  and  excitement  and  refinement  in  attracting  the  girl  of 
the  people,  as  the  flame  attracts  the  moth,  is  indicated  by  the 
fact  that  it  is  the  country-dwellers  who  chiefly  succumb  to  the 
fascination.  The  girls  whose  adolescent  explosive  and  orgiastic 
impulses,  sometimes  increased  by  a  slight  congenital  lack  of 
nervous  balance,  have  been  latent  in  the  dull  monotony  of  country 
life  and  heightened  by  the  spectacle  of  luxury  acting  on  the 
unrelieved  drudgery  of  town  life,  find  at  last  their  complete 
gratification  in  the  career  of  a  prostitute.  To  the  town  girl, 
born  and  bred  in  the  town,  this  career  has  not  usually  much 
attraction,  unless  she  has  been  brought  up  from  the  first  in 
an  environment  that  predisposes  her  to  adopt  it.  She  is  familiar 
from  childhood  with  the  excitements  of  urban  civilization  and 
they  do  not  intoxicate  her ;  she  is,  moreover,  more  shrewd  to  take 
care  of  herself  than  the  country  girl,  and  too  well  acquainted 
with  the  real  facts  of  the  prostitute's  life  to  be  very  anxious  to 
adopt  her  career.  Beyond  this,  also,  it  is  probable  that  the 
stocks  she  belongs  to  possess  a  native  or  acquired  power  of 
resistance  to  unbalancing  influences  which  has  enabled  them  to 
survive  in  urban  life.  She  has  become  immune  to  the  poisons  of 
that  life.1 


i  Since  this  was  written  the  influence  of  several  generations  of 
town-life  in  immunizing  a  stock  to  the  evils  of  that  life  (though  with- 
out reference  to  prostitution)  has  been  set  forth  by  Reibmayr,  Die 
Entwicklungsgeschichte  des  Talentes  und  Genies,  1908,  vol.  ii,  pp.  73  et 
seq. 


294  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

In  all  great  cities  a  large  proportion,  if  not  the  majority,  of  the 
inhabitants  have  usually  been  born  outside  the  city  (in  London  only 
about  fifty  per  cent,  of  heads  of  households  are  definitely  reported  as 
born  in  London)  ;  and  it  is  not  therefore  surprising  that  prostitutes 
also  should  often  be  outsiders.  Still  it  remains  a  significant  fact  that 
so  typically  urban  a  phenomenon  as  prostitution  should  be  so  largely 
recruited  from  the  country.  This  is  everywhere  the  case.  Merrick 
enumerates  the  regions  from  which  came  some  14,000  prostitutes  who 
passed  through  Millbank  Prison.  Middlesex,  Kent,  Surrey,  Essex  and 
Devon  are  the  counties  that  stand  at  the  head,  and  Merrick  estimates 
that  the  contingent  of  London  from  the  four  counties  which  make  up 
London  was  7000,  or  one-half  of  the  whole;  military  towns  like  Col- 
chester and  naval  ports  like  Plymouth  supply  many  prostitutes  to 
London;  Ireland  furnished  many  more  than  Scotland,  and  Germany  far 
more  than  any  other  European  country,  France  being  scarcely  repre- 
sented at  all  (Merrick,  Work  Among  the  Fallen,  1890,  pp.  14-16).  It  is, 
of  course,  possible  that  the  proportions  among  those  who  pass  through  a 
prison  do  not  accurately  represent  the  proportions  among  prostitutes 
generally.  The  registers  of  the  London  Salvation  Army  Rescue  Home 
show  that  sixty  per  cent,  of  the  girls  and  women  come  from  the  provinces 
(A.  Sherwell,  Life  in  West  London,  Ch.  V).  This  is  exactly  the  same 
proportion  as  Tait  found  among  prostitutes  generally,  half  a  century 
earlier,  in  Edinburgh.  Sanger  found  that  of  2000  prostitutes  in  New 
York  as  many  as  1238  were  born  abroad  (706  in  Ireland),  while  of  the 
remaining  762  only  half  were  born  in  the  State  of  New  York,  and  clearly 
(though  the  exact  figures  are  not  given)  a  still  smaller  proportion  in 
New  York  City.  Prostitutes  come  from  the  North — where  the  climate  is 
uncongenial,  and  manufacturing  and  sedentary  occupations  prevail — 
much  more  than  from  the  South ;  thus  Maine,  a  cold  bleak  maritime  State, 
sent  twenty-four  of  these  prostitutes  to  New  York,  while  equidistant  Vir- 
ginia, which  at  the  same  rate  should  have  sent  seventy-two,  only  sent 
nine ;  there  was  a  similar  difference  between  Rhode  Island  and  Maryland 
(Sanger,  History  of  Prostitution,  p.  452).  It  is  instructive  to  see  here 
the  influence  of  a  dreary  climate  and  monotonous  labor  in  stimulating 
the  appetite  for  a  "life  of  pleasure."  In  France,  as  shown  by  a  map  in 
Parent-Duchatelet's  work  (vol.  i,  pp.  37-64,  1857),  if  the  country  is 
divided  into  five  zones,  on  the  whole  running  east  and  west,  there  is  a 
steady  and  progressive  decrease  in  the  number  of  prostitutes  each  zone 
sends  to  Paris,  as  we  descend  southwards.  Little  more  than  a  third 
seem  to  belong  to  Paris,  and,  as  in  America,  it  is  the  serious  and  hard- 
working North,  with  its  relatively  cold  climate,  which  furnishes  the 
largest  contingent;  even  in  old  France,  Dufour  remarks  (op.  tit.,  vol. 
iv,  Ch.  XV),  prostitution,  as  the  fabliaux  and  romans  show,  was  less 
infamous  in  the  langue  d'oil  than  in  the  langue  d'oc,  so  that  they  were 


PEOSTITUTION.  295 

doubtless  rare  in  the  South.  At  a  later  period  Reuss  states  (La  Prosti- 
tution, p.  12)  that  "nearly  all  the  prostitutes  of  Paris  come  from  the 
provinces."  Jeannel  found  that  of  one  thousand  Bordeaux  prostitutes 
only  forty-six  belonged  to  the  city  itself,  and  Potton  (Appendix  to 
Parent-Duchatelet,  vol.  ii,  p.  446)  states  that  of  nearly  four  thousand 
Lyons  prostitutes  only  376  belonged  to  Lyons.  In  Vienna,  in  1873, 
Schrank  remarks  that  of  over  1500  prostitutes  only  615  were  born  in 
Vienna.  The  general  rule,  it  will  be  seen,  though  the  variations  are 
wide,  is  that  little  more  than  a  third  of  a  city's  prostitutes  are  children 
of  the  city. 

It  is  interesting  to  note  that  this  tendency  of  the  prostitute  to 
reach  cities  from  afar,  this  migratory  tendency — which  they  nowadays 
share  with  waiters — is  no  merely  modern  phenomenon.  "There  are  few 
cities  in  Lombardy,  or  France,  or  Gaul,"  wrote  St.  Boniface  nearly  twelve 
centuries  ago,  "in  which  there  is  not  an  adulteress  or  prostitute  of  the 
English  nation,"  and  the  Saint  attributes  this  to  the  custom  of  going 
on  pilgrimage  to  foreign  shrines.  At  the  present  time  there  is  no  marked 
English  element  among  Continental  prostitutes.  Thus  in  Paris,  accord- 
ing to  Reuss  (La  Prostitution,  p.  12),  the  foreign  prostitutes  in  decreas- 
ing order  are  Belgian,  German  (Alsace-Lorraine),  Swiss  (especially 
Geneva),  Italian,  Spanish,  and  only  then  English.  Connoisseurs  in  this 
matter  say,  indeed,  that  the  English  prostitute,  as  compared  with  her 
Continental  (and  especially  French)  sister,  fails  to  show  to  advantage, 
being  usually  grasping  as  regards  money  and  deficient  in  charm. 

It  is  the  appeal  of  civilization,  though  not  of  what  is  finest 
and  best  in  civilization,  which  more  than  any  other  motive,  calls 
women  to  the  career  of  a  prostitute.  It  is  now  necessary  to  point 
out  that  for  the  man  also,  the  same  appeal  makes  itself  felt  in  the 
person  of  the  prostitute.  The  common  and  ignorant  assumption 
that  prostitution  exists  to  satisfy  the  gross  sensuality  of  the 
young  unmarried  man,  and  that  if  he  is  taught  to  bridle  gross 
sexual  impulse  or  induced  to  marry  early  the  prostitute  must  be 
idle,  is  altogether  incorrect.  If  all  men  married  when  quite 
young,  not  only  would  the  remedy  be  worse  than  the  disease — a 
point  which  it  would  be  out  of  place  to  discuss  here — but  the 
remedy  would  not  cure  the  disease.  The  prostitute  is  something 
more  than  a  channel  to  drain  off  superfluous  sexual  energy,  and 
her  attraction  by  no  means  ceases  when  men  are  married,  for  a 
large  number  of  the  men  who  visit  prostitutes,  if  not  the  majority, 


296  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

are  married.     And  alike  whether  they  are  married  or  unmarried 
the  motive  is  not  one  of  uncomplicated  lust. 

In  England,  a  well-informed  writer  remarks  that  "the  value  of 
marriage  as  a  moral  agent  is  evidenced  by  the  fact  that  all  the  better- 
class  prostitutes  in  London  are  almost  entirely  supported  by  married 
men,"  while  in  Germany,  as  stated  in  the  interesting  series  of  reminis- 
cences by  a  former  prostitute,  Hedwig  Hard's  Beichte  einer  Qefallenen, 
(p.  208),  the  majority  of  the  men  who  visit  prostitutes  are  married. 
The  estimate  is  probably  excessive.  Neisser  states  that  only  twenty-five 
per  cent,  of  cases  of  gonorrhoea  occur  in  married  men.  This  indication 
is  probably  misleading  in  the  opposite  direction,  as  the  married  would 
be  less  reckless  than  the  young  and  unmarried.  As  regards  the  motives 
which  lead  married  men  to  prostitutes,  Hedwig  Hard  narrates  from  her 
own  experiences  an  incident  which  is  instructive  and  no  doubt  typical. 
In  the  town  in  which  she  lived  quietly  as  a  prostitute  a  man  of  the  best 
social  class  was  introduced  by  a  friend,  and  visited  her  habitually.  She 
had  often  seen  and  admired  his  wife,  who  was  one  of  the  beauties  of  the 
place,  and  had  two  charming  children ;  husband  and  wife  seemed  devoted 
to  each  other,  and  every  one  envied  their  happiness.  He  was  a  man  of 
intellect  and  culture  who  encouraged  Hed wig's  love  of  books ;  she  became 
greatly  attached  to  him,  and  one  day  ventured  to  ask  him  how  he  could 
leave  his  lovely  and  charming  wife  to  come  to  one  who  was  not  worthy 
to  tie  her  shoe-lace.  "Yes,  my  child,"  he  answered,  "but  all  her  beauty 
and  culture  brings  nothing  to  my  heart.  She  is  cold,  cold  as  ice,  proper, 
and,  above  all,  phlegmatic.  Pampered  and  spoilt,  she  lives  only  for  her- 
self; we  are  two  good  comrades,  and  nothing  more.  If,  for  instance,  I 
come  back  from  the  club  in  the  evening  and  go  to  her  bed,  perhaps  a 
little  excited,  she  becomes  nervous  and  she  thinks  it  improper  to  wake 
her  If  I  kiss  her  she  defends  herself,  and  tells  me  that  I  smell  horribly 
of  cigars  and  wine.  And  if  perhaps  I  attempt  more,  she  jumps  out  of 
bed,  bristles  up  as  though  I  were  assaulting  her,  and  threatens  to  throw 
herself  out  of  the  window  if  I  touch  her.  So,  for  the  sake  of  peace,  I 
leave  her  alone  and  come  to  you."  There  can  be  no  doubt  whatever  that 
this  is  the  experience  of  many  married  men  who  would  be  well  content 
to  find  the  sweetheart  as  well  as  the  friend  in  their  wives.  But  the 
wives,  from  a  variety  of  causes,  have  proved  incapable  of  becoming  the 
sexual  mates  of  their  husbands.  And  the  husbands,  without  being  car- 
ried away  by  any  impulse  of  strong  passion  or  any  desire  for  infidelity, 
seek  abroad  what  they  cannot  find  at  home. 

This  is  not  the  only  reason  why  married  men  visit  prostitutes. 
Even  men  who  are  happily  married  to  women  in  all  chief  respects  fitted 
to  them,  are  apt  to  find,  after  some  years  of  married  life,  a  mysterious 


PROSTITUTION".  297 

craving  for  variety.  They  are  not  tired  of  their  wives,  they  have  not 
the  least  wish  or  intention  to  abandon  them,  they  will  not,  if  they  can 
help  it,  give  them  the  slightest  pain.  But  from  time  to  time  they  are 
led  by  an  almost  irresistible  and  involuntary  impulse  to  seek  a  temporary 
intimacy  with  women  to  whom  nothing  would  persuade  them  to  join 
themselves  permanently.  Pepys,  whose  Diary,  in  addition  to  its  other 
claims  upon  us,  is  a  psychological  document  of  unique  importance,  fur- 
nishes a  very  characteristic  example  of  this  kind  of  impulse.  He  had 
married  a  young  and  charming  wife,  to  whom  he  is  greatly  attached,  and 
he  lives  happily  with  her,  save  for  a  few  occasional  domestic  quarrels 
soon  healed  by  kisses;  his  love  is  witnessed  by  his  jealousy,  a  jealousy 
which,  as  he  admits,  is  quite  unreasonable,  for  she  is  a  faithful  and 
devoted  wife.  Yet  a  few  years  after  marriage,  and  in  the  midst  of  a 
life  of  strenuous  official  activity,  Pepys  cannot  resist  the  temptation  to 
seek  the  temporary  favors  of  other  women,  seldom  prostitutes,  but  nearly 
always  women  of  low  social  class — shop  women,  workmen's  wives, 
superior  servant-girls.  Often  he  is  content  to  invite  them  to  a  quiet 
ale-house,  and  to  take  a  few  trivial  liberties.  Sometimes  they  absolutely 
refuse  to  allow  more  than  this;  when  that  happens  he  frequently  thanks 
Almighty  God  (as  he  makes  his  entry  in  his  Diary  at  night)  that  he 
has  been  saved  from  temptation  and  from  loss  of  time  and  money;  in 
any  case,  he  is  apt  to  vow  that  it  shall  never  occur  again.  It  always 
does  occur  again.  Pepys  is  quite  sincere  with  himself;  he  makes  no 
attempt  at  justification  or  excuse;  he  knows  that  he  has  yielded  to  a 
temptation;  it  is  an  impulse  that  comes  over  him  at  intervals,  an  im- 
pulse that  he  seems  unable  long  to  resist.  Throughout  it  all  he  remains 
an  estimable  and  diligent  official,  and  in  most  respects  a  tolerably 
virtuous  man,  with  a  genuine  dislike  of  loose  people  and  loose  talk. 
The  attitude  of  Pepys  is  brought  out  with  incomparable  simplicity  and 
sincerity  because  he  is  setting  down  these  things  for  his  own  eyes  only, 
but  his  case  is  substantially  that  of  a  vast  number  of  other  men,  per- 
haps indeed  of  the  typical  homme  moyen  sensuel  (see  Pepys,  Diary,  ed. 
Wheatley;    e.g.,  vol.  iv,  passim). 

There  is  a  third  class  of  married  men,  less  considerable  in  number 
but  not  unimportant,  who  are  impelled  to  visit  prostitutes :  the  class  of 
sexually  perverted  men.  There  are  a  great  many  reasons  why  such  men 
may  desire  to  be  married,  and  in  some  cases  they  marry  women  with 
whom  they  find  it  possible  to  obtain  the  particular  form  of  sexual  gratifi- 
cation they  crave.  But  in  a  large  proportion  of  cases  this  is  not 
possible.  The  conventionally  bred  woman  often  cannot  bring  herself  to 
humor  even  some  quite  innocent  fetishistie  whim  of  her  husband's,  for 
it  is  too  alien  to  her  feelings  and  too  incomprehensible  to  her  ideas,  even 
though  she  may  be  genuinely  in  love  with  him;  in  many  cases  the  hus- 
band would  not  venture  to  ask,  and  scarcely  even  wish,  that  his  wife 


298  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   SEX. 

should  lend  herself  to  play  the  fantastic  or  possibly  degrading  part  his 
desires  demand.  In  such  a  case  he  turns  naturally  to  the  prostitute,  the 
only  woman  whose  business  it  is  to  fulfil  his  peculiar  needs.  Marriage 
has  brought  no  relief  to  these  men,  and  they  constitute  a  noteworthy 
proportion  of  a  prostitute's  clients  in  every  great  city.  The  most  ordi- 
nary prostitute  of  any  experience  can  supply  cases  from  among  her  own 
visitors  to  illustrate  a  treatise  of  psychopathic  sexuality.  It  may  suffice 
here  to  quote  a  passage  from  the  confessions  of  a  young  London  (Strand) 
prostitute  as  written  down  from  her  lips  by  a  friend  to  whom  I  am 
indebted  for  the  document;  I  have  merely  turned  a  few  colloquial  terms 
into  more  technical  forms.  After  describing  how,  when  she  was  still  a 
child  of  thirteen  in  the  country,  a  rich  old  gentleman  would  frequently 
come  and  exhibit  himself  before  her  and  other  girls,  and  was  eventually 
arrested  and  imprisoned,  she  spoke  of  the  perversities  she  had  met  with 
since  she  had  become  a  prostitute.  She  knew  a  young  man,  about 
twenty-five,  generally  dressed  in  a  sporting  style,  who  always  came  with 
a  pair  of  live  pigeons,  which  he  brought  in  a  basket.  She  and  the  girl 
with  whom  she  lived  had  to  undress  and  take  the  pigeons  and  wring 
their  necks;  he  would  stand  in  front  of  them,  and  as  the  necks  were 
wrung  orgasm  occurred.  Once  a  man  met  her  in  the  street  and  asked 
her  if  he  might  come  with  her  and  lick  her  boots.  She  agreed,  and  he 
took  her  to  a  hotel,  paid  half  a  guinea  for  a  room,  and,  when  she  sat 
down,  got  under  the  table  and  licked  her  boots,  which  were  covered  with 
mud;  he  did  nothing  more.  Then  there  were  some  things,  she  said,  that 
were  too  dirty  to  repeat;  well,  one  man  came  home  with  her  and  her 
friend  and  made  them  urinate  into  his  mouth.  She  also  had  stories  of 
flagellation,  generally  of  men  who  whipped  the  girls,  more  rarely  of  men 
who  liked  to  be  whipped  by  them.  One  man,  who  brought  a  new  birch 
every  time,  liked  to  whip  her  friend  until  he  drew  blood.  She  knew 
another  man  who  would  do  nothing  but  smack  her  nates  violently.  Now 
all  these  things,  which  come  into  the  ordinary  day's  work  of  the  prosti- 
tute, are  rooted  in  deep  and  almost  irresistible  impulses  (as  will  be  clear 
to  any  reader  of  the  discussion  of  Erotic  Symbolism  in  the  previous 
volume  of  these  Studies).  They  must  find  some  outlet.  But  it  is  only 
the  prostitute  who  can  be  relied  upon,  through  her  interests  and  train- 
ing, to  overcome  the  natural  repulsion  to  such  actions,  and  gratify 
desires  which,  without  gratification,  might  take  on  other  and  more  dan- 
gerous forms. 

Although  Woods  Hutchinson  quotes  with  approval  the 
declaration  of  a  friend,  "Out  of  thousands  I  have  never  seen  one 
with  good  table  manners/'  there  is  still  a  real  sense  in  which  the 
prostitute  represents,  however  inadequately,  the  attraction  of 


PROSTITUTION.  299 

civilization.  "There  was  no  house  in  which  I  could  habitually 
see  a  lady's  face  and  hear  a  lady's  voice,"  wrote  the  novelist 
Anthony  Trollope  in  his  Autobiography,  concerning  his  early  life 
in  London.  "jSTo  allurement  to  decent  respectability  came  in  my 
way.  It  seems  to  me  that  in  such  circumstances  the  temptations 
of  loose  life  will  almost  certainly  prevail  with  a  young  man. 
The  temptation  at  any  rate  prevailed  with  me."  In  every  great 
city,  it  has  been  said,  there  are  thousands  of  men  who  have  no 
right  to  call  any  woman  but  a  barmaid  by  her  Christian  name.1 
All  the  brilliant  fever  of  civilization  pulses  round  them  in  the 
streets  but  their  lips  never  touch  it.  It  is  the  prostitute  who 
incarnates  this  fascination  of  the  city,  far  better  than  the 
virginal  woman,  even  if  intimacy  with  her  were  within  reach. 
The  prostitute  represents  it  because  she  herself  feels  it,  because 
she  has  even  sacrificed  her  woman's  honor  in  the  effort  to 
identify  herself  with  it.  She  has  unbridled  feminine  instincts, 
she  is  a  mistress  of  the  feminine  arts  of  adornment,  she  can  speak 
to  him  concerning  the  mysteries  of  womanhood  and  the  lux- 
uries of  sex  with  an  immediate  freedom  and  knowledge  the 
innocent  maiden  cloistered  in  her  home  would  be  incapable  of. 
She  appeals  to  him  by  no  means  only  because  she  can  gratify  the 
lower  desires  of  sex,  but  also  because  she  is,  in  her  way,  an  artist, 
an  expert  in  the  art  of  feminine  exploitation,  a  leader  of  feminine 
fashions.  For  she  is  this,  and  there  are,  as  Simmel  has  stated  in 
his  Philosophie  der  Mode,  good  psychological  reasons  why  she 
always  should  be  this.  Her  uncertain  social  position  makes  all 
that  is  conventional  and  established  hateful  to  her,  while  her  tem- 
perament makes  perpetual  novelty  delightful.  In  new  fashions 
she  finds  "an  assthetic  form  of  that  instinct  of  destruction  which 
seems  peculiar  to  all  pariah  existences,  in  so  far  as  they  are  not 
completely  enslaved  in  spirit." 

l  In  France  this  intimacy  is  embodied  in  the  delicious  privilege  of 
tutoiement.  "The  mystery  of  tutoiemeht!"  exclaims  Ernest  La  Jennesse 
in  L'Holocauste :  "Barriers  broken  down,  veils  drawn  away,  and  the  ease 
of  existence!  At  a  time  when  I  was  very  lonely,  and  trying  to  grow 
accustomed  to  Paris  and  to  misfortune,  I  would  go  miles — on  foot,  nat- 
urally— to  see  a  girl  cousin  and  an  aunt,  merely  to  have  something  to 
tutoyer.  Sometimes  they  were  not  at  home,  and  I  had  to  come  back 
with  my  tu,  my  thirst  for  confidence  and  familiarity  and  brotherliness." 


300  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   SEX. 

"However  surprising  it  may  seem  to  some,"  a  modern  writer 
remarks,  "prostitutes  must  be  put  on  the  same  level  as  artists.  Both 
use  their  gifts  and  talents  for  the  joy  and  pleasure  of  others,  and,  as  a 
rule,  for  payment.  What  is  the  essential  difference  between  a  singer 
who  gives  pleasure  to  hearers  by  her  throat  and  a  prostitute  who  gives 
pleasure  to  those  who  seek  her  by  another  part  of  her  body?  All  art 
works  on  the  senses."  He  refers  to  the  significant  fact  that  actors,  and 
especially  actresses,  were  formerly  regarded  much  as  prostitutes  are  now 
(R.  Hellmann,  TJeber  Gescklechtsfreiheit,  pp.  245-252). 

Bernaldo  de  Quiros  and  Lianas  Aguilaniedo  (La  Mala  Vida  en 
Madrid,  p.  242)  trace  the  same  influence  still  lower  in  the  social  scale. 
They  are  describing  the  more  squalid  kind  of  cafe  chantant,  in  which,  in 
Spain  and  elsewhere,  the  most  vicious  and  degenerate  feminine  creatures 
become  waitresses  ( and  occasionally  singers  and  dancers ) ,  playing  the 
part  of  amiable  and  distinguished  hetai?~w  to  the  public  of  carmen  and 
shop-boys  who  frequent  these  resorts.  "Dressed  with  what  seems  to  the 
youth  irreproachable  taste,  with  hair  elaborately  prepared,  and  clean 
face  adorned  with  flowers  or  trinkets,  affable  and  at  times  haughty, 
superior  in  charm  and  in  finery  to  the  other  women  he  is  able  to  know, 
the  waitresses  become  the  most  elevated  example  of  the  femme  galante 
whom  he  is  able  to  contemplate  and  talk  to,  the  courtesan  of  his  sphere." 

But  while  to  the  simple,  ignorant,  and  hungry  youth  the 
prostitute  appeals  as  the  embodiment  of  many  of  the  refinements 
and  perversities  of  civilization,  on  many  more  complex  and 
civilized  men  she  exerts  an  attraction  of  an  almost  reverse  kind. 
She  appeals  by  her  fresh  and  natural  coarseness,  her  frank 
familiarity  with  the  crudest  facts  of  life;  and  so  lifts  them  for 
a  moment  out  of  the  withering  atmosphere  of  artificial  thought 
and  unreal  sentiment  in  which  so  many  civilized  persons  are 
compelled  to  spend  the  greater  part  of  their  lives.  They  feel  in 
the  words  which  the  royal  friend  of  a  woman  of  this  temperament 
is  said  to  have  used  in  explaining  her  incomprehensible  influence 
over  him  :   "She  is  so  splendidly  vulgar !" 

In  illustration  of  this  aspect  of  the  appeal  of  prostitution,  I  may 
quote  a  passage  in  which  the  novelist,  Hermant,  in  his  Confession  d'un 
Enfant  d'Hier  (Lettre  VII),  has  set  down  the  reasons  which  may  lead 
the  super-refined  child  of  a  cultured  age,  yet  by  no  means  radically  or 
completely  vicious,  to  find  satisfaction  in  commerce  with  prostitutes: 
"As  long  as  my  heart  was  not  touched  the  object  of  my  satisfaction  was 
completely  indifferent  to  me.     I  was,  moreover,  a  great  lover  of  absolute 


PROSTITUTION.  301 

liberty,  which  is  only  possible  in  the  circle  of  these  anonymous  creatures 
and  in  their  reserved  dwelling.  There  everything  became  permissible. 
With  other  women,  however  low  we  may  seek  them,  certain  convenances 
must  be  observed,  a  kind  of  protocol.  To  these  one  can  say  everything: 
one  is  protected  by  incognito  and  assured  that  nothing  will  be  divulged. 
I  profited  by  this  freedom,  which  suited  my  age,  but  with  a  perverse 
fancy  which  was  not  characteristic  of  my  years.  I  scarcely  know  where 
I  found  what  I  said  to  them,  for  it  was  the  opposite  of  my  tastes,  which 
were  simple,  and,  if  I  may  venture  to  say  so,  classic.  It  is  true  that, 
in  matters  of  love,  unrestrained  naturalism  always  tends  to  perversion, 
a  fact  that  can  only  seem  paradoxical  at  first  sight.  Primitive  peoples 
have  many  traits  in  common  with  degenerates.  It  was,  however,  only 
in  words  that  I  was  unbridled ;  and  that  was  the  only  occasion  on  which 
I  can  recollect  seriously  lying.  But  that  necessity,  which  I  then  experi- 
enced, of  expelling  a  lower  depth  of  ignoble  instincts,  seems  to  me 
characteristic  and  humiliating.  I  may  add  that  even  in  the  midst  of 
these  dissipations  I  retained  a  certain  reserve.  The  contacts  to  which 
I  exposed  myself  failed  to  soil  me ;  nothing  was  left  when  I  had  crossed 
the  threshold.  I  have  always  retained,  from  that  forcible  and  indifferent 
commerce,  the  habit  of  attributing  no  consequence  to  the  action  of  the 
flesh.  The  amorous  function,  which  religion  and  morality  have  sur- 
rounded with  mystery  or  seasoned  with  sin,  seems  to  me  a  function  like 
any  other,  a  little  vile,  but  agreeable,  and  one  to  which  the  usual  epilogue 

is  too  long This  kind  of  companionship  only  lasted  for  a 

short  time."  This  analysis  of  the  attitude  of  a  certain  common  type  of 
civilized  modern  man  seems  to  be  just,  but  it  may  perhaps  occur  to  some 
readers  that  a  commerce  which  led  to  "the  action  of  the  flesh"  being 
regarded  as  of  no  consequence  can  scarcely  be  said  to  have  left  no  taint. 

In  a  somewhat  similar  manner,  Henri  de  Regnier,  in  his  novel,  Les 
Rencontres  de  Monsieur  Breot  (p.  50),  represents  Bercaille  as  delib- 
erately preferring  to  take  his  pleasures  with  servant-girls  rather  than 
with  ladies,  for  pleasure  was,  to  his  mind,  a  kind  of  service,  which  could 
well  be  accommodated  with  the  services  they  are  accustomed  to  give; 
and  then  they  are  robust  and  agreeable,  they  possess  the  naivete  which 
is  always  charming  in  the  common  people,  and  they  are  not  apt  to  be 
repelled  by  those  little  accidents  which  might  offend  the  fastidious  sensi- 
bilities of  delicately  bred  ladies. 

Bloch,  who  has  especially  emphasized  this  side  of  the  appeal  of 
prostitution  (Das  Sexualleben  unserer  Zeit,  pp.  359-362),  refers  to  the 
delicate  and  sensitive  young  Danish  writer,  J.  P.  Jakobsen,  who  seems  to 
have  acutely  felt  the  contrast  between  the  higher  and  more  habitual 
impulses,  and  the  occasional  outburst  of  what  he  felt  to  be  lower 
instincts;  in  his  Niels  Lyhne  he  describes  the  kind  of  double  life  in 
which  a  man  is  true  for  a  fortnight  to  the  god  he  worships,  and  is  then 


302  PSYCHOLOGY  OF   SEX. 

overcome  by  other  powers  which  madly  bear  him  in  their  grip  towards 
what  he  feels  to  be  humiliating,  perverse,  and  filthy.  "At  such  moments," 
Bloch  remarks,  "the  man  is  another  being.  The  'two  souls'  in  the  breast 
become  a  reality.  Is  that  the  famous  scholar,  the  lofty  idealist,  the  fine- 
souled  sesthetician,  the  artist  who  has  given  us  so  many  splendid  and 
pure  works  in  poetry  and  painting?  We  no  longer  recognize  him,  for 
at  such  moments  another  being  has  come  to  the  surface,  another  nature 
is  moving  within  him,  and  with  the  power  of  an  elementary  force  is 
impelling  him  towards  things  at  which  his  'upper  consciousness,'  the 
civilized  man  within  him,  would  shudder."  Bloch  believes  that  we  are 
here  concerned  with  a  kind  of  normal  masculine  masochism,  which 
prostitution  serves  to  gratify. 

IV.     The  Present  Social  Attitude  Towards  Prostitution. 

We  have  now  surveyed  the  complex  fact  of  prostitution  in 
some  of  its  most  various  and  typical  aspects,  seeking  to  realize, 
intelligently  and  sympathetically,  the  fundamental  part  it  plays 
as  an  elementary  constituent  of  our  marriage  system.  Finally 
we  have  to  consider  the  grounds  on  which  prostitution  now 
appears  to  a  large  and  growing  number  of  persons  not  only  an 
unsatisfactory  method  of  sexual  gratification  but  a  radically  bad 
method. 

The  movement  of  antagonism  towards  prostitution  manifests 
itself  most  conspicuously,  as  might  beforehand  have  been 
anticipated,  by  a  feeling  of  repugnance  towards  the  most  ancient 
and  typical,  once  the  most  credited  and  best  established  prostitu- 
tional  manifestation,  the  brothel.  The  growth  of  this  repug- 
nance is  not  confined  to  one  or  two  countries  but  is  international, 
and  may  thus  be  regarded  as  corresponding  to  a  real  tendency  in 
our  civilization.  It  is  equally  pronounced  in  prostitutes  them- 
selves and  in  the  people  who  are  their  clients.  The  distaste  on 
the  one  side  increases  the  distaste  on  the  other.  Since  only  the 
most  helpless  or  the  most  stupid  prostitutes  are  nowadays  willing 
to  accept  the  servitude  of  the  brothel,  the  brothel-keeper  is  forced 
to  resort  to  extraordinary  methods  for  entrapping  victims,  and 
even  to  take  part  in  that  cosmopolitan  trade  in  "white  slaves" 


PKOSTITUTION.  303 

which  exists  solely  to  feed  brothels.1  This  state  of  things  has  a 
natural  reaction  in  prejudicing  the  clients  of  prostitution  against 
an  institution  which  is  going  out  of  fashion  and  out  of  credit. 
An  even  more  fundamental  antipathy  is  engendered  by  the  fact 
that  the  brothel  fails  to  respond  to  the  high  degree  of  personal 
freedom  and  variety  which  civilization  produces,  and  always 
demands  even  when  it  fails  to  produce.  On  one  side  the  prosti- 
tute is  disinclined  to  enter  into  a  slavery  which  usually  fails  even 
to  bring  her  any  reward ;  on  the  other  side  her  client  feels  it  as 
part  of  the  fascination  of  prostitution  under  civilized  conditions 
that  he  shall  enjoy  a  freedom  and  choice  the  brothel  cannot 
provide.2  Thus  it  comes  about  that  brothels  which  once  con- 
tained nearly  all  the  women  who  made  it  a  business  to  minister 
to  the  sexual  needs  of  men,  now  contain  only  a  decreasing 
minority,  and  that  the  transformation  of  cloistered  prostitution 
into  free  prostitution  is  approved  by  many  social  reformers  as  a 
gain  to  the  cause  of  morality.3 

The  decay  of  brothels,  whether  as  cause  or  as  effect,  has 
been  associated  with  a  vast  increase  of  prostitution  outside 
brothels.  But  the  repugnance  to  brothels  in  many  essential 
respects  also  applies  to  prostitution  generally,  and,  as  we  shall 
see,  it  is  exerting  a  profoundly  modifying  influence  on  that 
prostitution. 

The  changing  feeling  in  regard  to  prostitution  seems  to 
express  itself  mainly  in  two  ways.  On  the  one  hand  there  are 
those  who,  without  desiring  to  abolish  prostitution,  resent  the 
abnegation  which  accompanies  it,  and  are  disgusted  by  its  sordid 
aspects.     They  may  have  no  moral  scruples  against  prostitution, 


i  For  some  facts  and  references  to  the  extensive  literature  concern- 
ing this  trade,  see,  e.g.,  Bloch,  Das  Sexualleben  Unserer  Zeit,  pp.  374-376; 
also  K.  M.  Baer,  Zeitschrift  fur  Sexualwissenschaft,  Sept.,  1908;  Pau- 
lucci  de  Calboli,  Nuova  Antologia,  April,  1902. 

2  These  considerations  do  not,  it  is  true,  apply  to  many  kinds  of 
sexual  perverts  who  form  an  important  proportion  of  the  clients  of 
brothels.  These  can  frequently  find  what  they  crave  inside  a  brothel 
much  more  easily  than  outside. 

3  Thus  Charles  Booth,  in  his  great  work  on  Life  and  Labor  in  Lon- 
don, final  volume  (p.  128),  recommends  that  "houses  of  accommodation," 
instead  of  being  hunted  out,  should  be  tolerated  as  a  step  towards  the 
suppression  of  brothels. 


304  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

and  they  know  no  reason  why  a  woman  should  not  freely  do  as 
she  will  with  her  own  person.  But  they  believe  that,  if  prostitu- 
tion is  necessary,  the  relationships  of  men  with  jDrostitutes  should 
be  humane  and  agreeable  to  each  part}r,  and  not  degrading  to 
either.  It  must  be  remembered  that  under  the  conditions  of 
civilized  urban  life,  the  discipline  of  work  is  often  too  severe, 
and  the  excitements  of  urban  existence  too  constant,  to  render 
an  abandonment  to  orgy  a  desirable  recreation.  The  gross  form 
of  orgy  appeals,  not  to  the  town-dweller  but  to  the  peasant,  and 
to  the  sailor  or  soldier  who  reaches  the  town  after  long  periods  of 
dreary  routine  and  emotional  abstinence.  It  is  a  mistake,  even,  to 
suppose  that  the  attraction  of  prostitution  is  inevitably  asso- 
ciated with  the  fulfilment  of  the  sexual  act.  So  far  is  this  from 
being  the  case  that  the  most  attractive  prostitute  may  be  a  woman 
who,  possessing  few  sexual  needs  of  her  own,  desires  to  please  by 
the  charm  of  her  personality;  these  are  among  those  who  most 
often  find  good  husbands.  There  are  many  men  who  are  even 
well  content  merely  to  have  a  few  hours'  free  intimacy  with  an 
agreeable  woman,  without  any  further  favor,  although  that  may 
be  open  to  them.  For  a  very  large  number  of  men  under  urban 
conditions  of  existence  the  prostitute  is  ceasing  to  be  the  degraded 
instrument  of  a  moment's  lustful  desire ;  they  seek  an  agreeable 
human  person  with  whom  they  may  find  relaxation  from  the 
daily  stress  or  routine  of  life.  When  an  act  of  prostitution  is 
thus  put  on  a  humane  basis,  although  it  by  no  means  thereby 
becomes  conducive  to  the  best  development  of  either  party,  it  at 
least  ceases  to  be  hopelessly  degrading.  Otherwise  it  would  not 
have  been  possible  for  religious  prostitution  to  flourish  for  so  long 
in  ancient  days  among  honorable  women  of  good  birth  on  the 
shores  of  the  Mediterranean,  even  in  regions  like  Lydia,  where  the 
position  of  women  was  peculiarly  high.1 

It  is  true  that  the  monetary  side  of  prostitution  would  still 
exist.     But  it  is  possible  to  exaggerate  its  importance.     It  must 

i  "Towns  like  Woolwich,  Aldershot,  Portsmouth,  Plymouth,"  it  has 
been  said,  "abound  with  wretched,  filthy  monsters  that  bear  no  resem- 
blance to  women;  but  it  is  drink,  scorn,  brutality  and  disease  which 
have  reduced  them  to  this  state,  not  the  mere  fact  of  associating  with 
men." 


PROSTITUTION.  305 

be  pointed  out  that,  though  it  is  usual  to  speak  of  the  prostitute 
as  a  woman  who  "sells  herself/'  this  is  rather  a  crude  and  inexact 
way  of  expressing,  in  its  typical  form,  the  relationship  of  a 
prostitute  to  her  client.  A  prostitute  is  not  a  commodity  with  a 
market-price,  like  a  loaf  or  a  leg  of  mutton.  She  is  much  more 
on  a  level  with  people  belonging  to  the  professional  classes,  who 
accept  fees  in  return  for  services  rendered;  the  amount  of  the 
fee  varies,  on  the  one  hand  in  accordance  with  professional 
standing,  on  the  other  hand  in  accordance  with  the  client's  means, 
and  under  special  circumstances  may  be  graciously  dispensed 
with  altogether.  Prostitution  places  on  a  venal  basis  intimate 
relationships  which  ought  to  spring  up  from  natural  love,  and 
in  so  doing  degrades  them.  But  strictly  speaking  there  is  in 
such  a  case  no  "sale."  To  speak  of  a  prostitute  "selling  herself" 
is  scarcely  even  a  pardonable  rhetorical  exaggeration;  it  is  both 
inexact  and  unjust.1 

This  tendency  in  an  advanced  civilization  towards  the  humaniza- 
tion  of  prostitution  is  the  reverse  process,  we  may  note,  to  that  which 
takes  place  at  an  earlier  stage  of  civilization  when  the  ancient  concep- 
tion of  the  religious  dignity  of  prostitution  begins  to  fall  into  disrepute. 
When  men  cease  to  reverence  women  who  are  prostitutes  in  the  service 
of  a  goddess  they  set  up  in  their  place  prostitutes  who  are  merely  abject 
slaves,  nattering  themselves  that  they  are  thereby  working  in  the  cause 
of  "progress"  and  "morality."  On  the  shores  of  the  Mediterranean  this 
process  took  place  more  than  two  thousand  years  ago,  and  is  associated 
with  the  name  of  Solon.  To-day  we  may  see  the  same  process  going  on 
in  India.  In  some  parts  of  India  (as  at  Jejuri,  near  Poonah)  first  born 
girls  are  dedicated  to  Khandoba  or  other  gods;  they  are  married  to  the 
god  and  termed  muralis.     They  serve  in  the  temple,  sweep  it,  and  wash 

1  "The  contract  of  prostitution  in  the  opinion  of  prostitutes  them- 
selves," Bernaldo  de  Quiros  and  Lianas  Aguilaniedo  remark  (La  Mala 
Vida  en  Madrid,  p.  254),  "cannot  be  assimilated  to  a  sale,  nor  to  a  con- 
tract of  work,  nor  to  any  other  form  of  barter  recognized  by  the  civil 
law.  They  consider  that  in  these  pacts  there  always  enters  an  element 
which  makes  it  much  more  like  a  gift  in  a  matter  in  which  no  payment 
could  be  adequate.  'A  woman's  body  is  without  price'  is  an  axiom  of 
prostitution.  The  money  placed  in  the  hands  of  her  who  procures  the 
satisfaction  of  sexual  desire  is  not  the  price  of  the  act,  but  an  offering 
which  the  priestess  of  Venus  applies  to  her  maintenance."  To  the  Span- 
iard, it  is  true,  every  transaction  which  resembles  trade  is  repugnant, 
but  the  principle  underlying  this  feeling  holds  good  of  prostitution  gen- 
erally. 


306  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

the  holy  vessels,  also  they  dance,  sing  and  prostitute  themselves.  They 
are  forbidden  to  marry,  and  they  live  in  the  homes  of  their  parents, 
brothers,  or  sisters;  being  consecrated  to  religious  service,  they  are 
untouched  by  degradation.  Nowadays,  however,  Indian  "reformers,"  in 
the  name  of  "civilization  and  science,"  seek  to  persuade  the  muralis  that 
they  are  "plunged  in  a  career  of  degradation."  No  doubt  in  time  the 
would-be  moralists  will  drive  the  muralis  out  of  their  temples  and  their 
homes,  deprive  them  of  all  self-respect,  and  convert  them  into  wretched 
outcasts,  all  in  the  cause  of  "science  and  civilization"  ( see,  e.g.,  an  arti- 
cle by  Mrs.  Kashibai  Deodhar,  The  New  Reformer,  October,  1907).  So 
it  is  that  early  reformers  create  for  the  reformers  of  a  later  day  the  task 
of  humanizing  prostitution  afresh. 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  this  more  humane  conception  of  prosti- 
tution is  to-day  beginning  to  be  realized  in  the  actual  civilized  life  of 
Europe.  Thus  in  writing  of  prostitution  in  Paris,  Dr.  Robert  Michels 
("Erotische  Streifziige,"  Mutterschutz,  1906,  Heft  9.  p.  368)  remarks: 
"While  in  Germany  the  prostitute  is  generally  considered  as  an  'outcast' 
creature,  and  treated  accordingly,  an  instrument  of  masculine  lust  to  be 
used  and  thrown  away,  and  whom  one  would  under  no  circumstances 
recognize  in  public,  in  France  the  prostitute  plays  in  many  respects  the 
part  which  once  give  significance  and  fame  to  the  hetairw  of  Athens." 
And  after  describing  the  consideration  and  respect  which  the  Parisian 
prostitute  is  often  able  to  require  of  her  friends,  and  the  non-sexual  rela- 
tion of  comradeship  which  she  can  enter  into  with  other  men,  the  writer 
continues:  "A  girl  who  certainly  yields  herself  for  money,  but  by  no 
means  for  the  first  comer's  money,  and  who,  in  addition  to  her  'business 
friends,'  feels  the  need  of,  so  to  say,  non-sexual  companions  with  whom 
she  can  associate  in  a  free  comrade-like  way,  and  by  whom  she  is  treated 
and  valued  as  a  free  human  being,  is  not  wholly  lost  for  the  moral  worth 
of  humanity."  All  prostitution  is  bad,  Michels  concludes,  but  we  should 
have  reason  to  congratulate  ourselves  if  love-relationships  of  this 
Parisian  species  represented  the  lowest  known  form  of  extra-conjugal 
sexuality.  ( As  bearing  on  the  relative  consideration  accorded  to  prosti- 
tutes I  may  mention  that  a  Paris  prostitute  remarked  to  a  friend  of 
mine  that  Englishmen  would  ask  her  questions  which  no  Frenchman 
would  venture  to  ask.) 

It  is  not,  however,  only  in  Paris,  although  here  more  markedly  and 
prominently,  that  this  humanizing  change  in  prostitution  is  beginning 
to  make  itself  felt.  It  is  manifested,  for  instance,  in  the  greater  open- 
ness of  a  man's  sexual  life.  "While  he  formerly  slinked  into  a  brothel 
in  a  remote  street,"  Dr.  Willy  Hellpach  remarks  (Nervositat  und  Kultur^ 
p.  169),  "he  now  walks  abroad  with  his  'liaison,'  visiting  the  theatres 
and  cafgs,  without  indeed  any  anxiety  to  meet  his  acquaintances,  but 
with  no  embarrassment  on  that  point.    The  thing  is  becoming  more  com- 


PROSTITUTION".  307 

monplace,  more — natural."  It  is  also,  Hellpach  proceeds  to  point  out, 
thus  becoming  more  moral  also,  and  much  unwholesome  prudery  and 
pruriency  is  being  done  away  with. 

In  England,  where  change  is  slow,  this  tendency  to  the  humaniza- 
tion  of  prostitution  may  be  less  pronounced.  But  it  certainly  exists. 
In  the  middle  of  the  last  century  Leeky  wrote  (History  of  European 
Morals,  vol.  ii,  p.  285)  that  habitual  prostitution  "is  in  no  other  Euro- 
pean country  so  hopelessly  vicious  or  so  irrevocable."  That  statement, 
which  was  also  made  by  Parent-Duchatelet  and  other  foreign  observers, 
is  fully  confirmed  by  the  evidence  on  record.  But  it  is  a  statement 
which  would  hardly  be  made  to-day,  except  prehaps,  in  reference  to  spe- 
cial confined  areas  of  our  cities.  It  is  the  same  in  America,  and  we 
may  doubtless  find  this  tendency  reflected  in  the  report  on  The  Social 
Evil  (1902),  drawn  up  by  a  committee  in  New  York,  who  gave  it  (p. 
176)  as  one  of  their  chief  recommendations  that  prostitution  should  no 
longer  be  regarded  as  a  crime,  in  which  light,  one  gathers,  it  had  formerly 
been  regarded  in  New  York.  That  may  seem  but  a  small  step  in  the 
path  of  humanization,  but  it  is  in  the  right  direction. 

It  is  by  no  means  only  in  lands  of  European  civilization  that  we 
may  trace  with  developing  culture  the  refinement  and  humanization  of 
the  slighter  bonds  of  relationship  with  women.  In  Japan  exactly  the 
same  demands  led,  several  centuries  ago,  to  the  appearance  of  the  geisha. 
In  the  course  of  an  interesting  and  precise  study  of  the  geisha  Mr.  R.  T. 
Farrer  remarks  (Nineteenth  Century,  April,  1904)  :  "The  geisha  is  in 
no  sense  necessarily  a  courtesan.  She  is  a  woman  educated  to  attract; 
perfected  from  her  childhood  in  all  the  intricacies  of  Japanese  litera- 
ture; practiced  in  wit  and  repartee;  inured  to  the  rapid  give-and-take 
of  conversation  on  every  topic,  human  and  divine.  From  her  earliest 
youth  she  is  broken  into  an  inviolable  charm  of  manner  incomprehensible 
to  the  finest  European,  yet  she  is  almost  invariably  a  blossom  of  the 
lower  classes,  with  dumpy  claws,  and  squat,  ugly  nails.  Her  education, 
physical  and  moral,  is  far  harder  than  that  of  the  ballerina,  and  her 
success  is  achieved  only  after  years  of  struggle  and  a  bitter  agony  of 

torture And  the  geisha's  social  position  may  be  compared 

with  that  of  the  European  actress.  The  Geisha-house  offers  prizes  as 
desirable  as  any  of  the  Western  stage.  A  great  geisha  with  twenty 
nobles  sitting  round  her,  contending  for  her  laughter,  and  kept  in  con- 
stant check  by  the  flashing  bodkin  of  her  wit,  holds  a  position  no  less 
high  and  famous  than  that  of  Sarah  Bernhardt  in  her  prime.  She  is 
equally  sought,  equally  flattered,  quite  as  madly  adored,  that  quiet  little 
elderly  plain  girl  in  dull  blue.  But  she  is  prized  thus  primarily  for  her 
tongue,  whose  power  only  ripens  fully  as  her  physical  charms  decline. 
She  demands  vast  sums  for  her  owners,  and  even  so  often  appears  and 
dances  only  at  her  own  pleasure.     Few,  if  any,  Westerners  ever  see  a 


308  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   SEX. 

really  famous  geisha.  She  is  too  great  to  come  before  a  European, 
except  for  an  august  or  imperial  command.  Finally  she  may,  and  fre- 
quently does,  marry  into  exalted  places.  In  all  this  there  is  not  the 
slightest  necessity  for  any  illicit  relation." 

In  some  respects  the  position  of  the  ancient  Greek  hetaira  was 
more  analogus  to  that  of  the  Japanese  geisha  than  to  that  of  the  prosti- 
tute in  the  strict  sense.  For  the  Greeks,  indeed,  the  hetaira,  was  not 
strictly  a  pome  or  prostitute  at  all.  The  name  meant  friend  or  com- 
panion, and  the  woman  to  whom  the  name  was  applied  held  an  honorable 
position,  which  could  not  be  accorded  to  the  mere  prostitute.  Athenseus 
(Bk.  xiii,  Chs.  XXVIII-XXX)  brings  together  passages  showing  that 
the  hetaira  could  be  regarded  as  an  independent  citizen,  pure,  simple,  and 
virtuous,  altogether  distinct  from  the  common  crew  of  prostitutes, 
though  these  might  ape  her  name.  The  hetaira?  "were  almost  the  only 
Greek  women,"  says  Donaldson  ( Woman,  p.  59 ) ,  "who  exhibited  what 
was  best  and  noblest  in  women's  nature."  This  fact  renders  it  more 
intelligible  why  a  woman  of  such  intellectual  distinction  as  Aspasia 
should  have  been  a  hetaira.  There  seems  little  doubt  as  to  her  intel- 
lectual distinction.  "iEschines,  in  his  dialogue  entitled  'Aspasia,'  "  writes 
Gomperz,  the  historian  of  Greek  philosophy  ( Greek  Thinkers,  vol.  iii,  pp. 
124  and  343) ,  "puts  in  the  mouth  of  that  distinguished  woman  an  incisive 
criticism  of  the  mode  of  life  traditional  for  her  sex.  It  would  be  exceed- 
ingly strange,"  Gomperz  adds,  in  arguing  that  an  inference  may  thus 
be  drawn  concerning  the  historical  Aspasia,  "if  three  authors — Plato, 
Xenophon  and  iEschines — had  agreed  in  fictitiously  enduing  the  com- 
panion of  Pericles  with  what  we  might  very  reasonably  have  expected 
her  to  possess — a  highly  cultivated  mind  and  intellectual  influence."  It 
is  even  possible  that  the  movement  for  woman's  right  which,  as  we  dimly 
divine  through  the  pages  of  Aristophanes,  took  place  in  Athens  in  the 
fourth  century  B.  C,  was  led  by  hetaira?.  According  to  Ivo  Brims 
(Frauenemancipation  in  Athen,  1900,  p.  19)  "the  most  certain  informa- 
tion which  we  possess  concerning  Aspasia  bears  a  strong  resemblance  to 
the  picture  which  Euripides  and  Aristophanes  present  to  us  of  the 
leaders  of  the  woman  movement."  It  was  the  existence  of  this  move- 
ment which  made  Plato's  ideas  on  the  community  of  women  appear  far 
less  absurd  than  they  do  to  us.  It  may  perhaps  be  thought  by  some 
that  this  movement  represented  on  a  higher  plane  that  love  of  distruc- 
tion,  or,  as  we  should  better  say,  that  spirit  of  revolt  and  aspiration, 
which  Simmel  finds  to  mark  the  intellectual  and  artistic  activity  of  those 
who  are  unclassed  or  dubiously  classed  in  the  social  hierarchy.  Ninon 
de  Lenclos,  as  we  have  seen,  was  not  strictly  a  courtesan,  but  she  was  a 
pioneer  in  the  assertion  of  woman's  rights.  Aphra  Behn  who,  a  little 
later  in  Eugland,  occupied  a  similarly  dubious  social  position,  was  like- 
wise a  pioneer  in  generous  humanitarian  aspirations,  which  have  since 
been  adopted  in  the  world  at  large. 


PROSTITUTION.  309 

These  refinements  of  prostitution  may  be  said  to  be  chiefly  the  out- 
come of  the  late  and  more  developed  stages  in  civilization.  As  Schurtz 
has  put  it  ( Alter sklassen  und  Mdnnerbiinde,  p.  191)  :  "The  cheerful, 
skilful  and  artistically  accomplished  hetaira  frequently  stands  as  an  ideal 
figure  in  opposition  to  the  intellectually  uncultivated  wife  banished  to 
the  interior  of  the  house.  The  courtesan  of  the  Italian  Renaissance, 
Japanese  geishas,  Chinese  flower-girls,  and  Indian  bayaderas,  all  show 
some  not  unnoble  features,  the  breath  of  a  free  artistic  existence.  They 
have  achieved — with,  it  is  true,  the  sacrifice  of  their  highest  worth — 
an  independence  from  the  oppressive  rule  of  man  and  of  household 
duties,  and  a  part  of  the  feminine  endowment  which  is  so  often  crippled 
comes  in  them  to  brilliant  development.  Prostitution  in  its  best  form 
may  thus  offer  a  path  by  which  these  feminine  characteristics  may  exert 
a  certain  influence  on  the  development  of  civilization.  We  may  also 
believe  that  the  artistic  activity  of  women  is  in  some  measure  able  to 
offer  a  counterpoise  to  the  otherwise  less  pleasant  results  of  sexual 
abandonment,  preventing  the  coarsening  and  destruction  of  the  emotional 
life;  in  his  Magda  Sudermann  has  described  a  type  of  woman  who,  from 
the  standpoint  of  strict  morality,  is  open  to  condemnation,  but  in  her 
art  finds  a  foothold,  the  strength  of  which  even  ill-will  must  unwillingly 
recognize."  In  his  Sex  and  Character,  Weininger  has  developed  in  a 
more  extreme  and  extravagant  manner  the  conception  of  the  prostitute 
as  a  fundamental  and  essential  part  of  life,  a  permanent  feminine  type. 

There  are  others,  apparently  in  increasing  numbers,  who 
approach  the  problem  of  prostitution  not  from  an  aesthetic  stand- 
point but  from  a  moral  standpoint.  This  moral  attitude  is  not, 
however,  that  conventionalized  morality  of  Cato  and  St.  Augus- 
tine and  Lecky,  set  forth  in  previous  pages,  according  to  which 
the  prostitute  in  the  street  must  be  accepted  as  the  guardian  of 
the  wife  in  the  home.  These  moralists  reject  indeed  the  claim  of 
that  belief  to  be  considered  moral  at  all.  They  hold  that  it  is 
not  morally  possible  that  the  honor  of  some  women  shall  be 
purchaseable  at  the  price  of  the  dishonor  of  other  women,  because 
at  such  a  price  virtue  loses  all  moral  worth.  When  they  read 
that,  as  Goncourt  stated,  "the  most  luxurious  articles  of  women's 
trousseaux,  the  bridal  chemises  of  girls  with  dowries  of  six 
hundred  thousand  francs,  are  made  in  the  prison  of  Clairvaux/?1 
they  see  the  symbol  of  the  intimate  dependence  of  our  luxurious 


1  Journal  des  Goncourt,  vol.  iii;    this  was  in  1866. 


310  PSYCHOLOGY   OF    SEX. 

virtue  on  our  squalid  vice.  And  while  they  accept  the  historical 
and  sociological  evidence  which  shows  that  prostitution  is  an 
inevitable  part  of  the  marriage  system  which  still  survives  among 
us,  they  ask  whether  it  is  not  possible  so  to  modify  our  marriage 
system  that  it  shall  not  be  necessary  to  divide  feminine  humanity 
into  "disreputable"  women,  who  make  sacrifices  which  it  is  dis- 
honorable to  make,  and  "respectable"  women,  who  take  sacrifices 
which  it  cannot  be  less  dishonorable  to  accept. 

Prostitutes,  a  distinguished  man  of  science  has  said  (Duclaux, 
UEygiene  Sociale,  p.  243 ) ,  "have  become  things  which  the  public  uses 
when  it  wants  them,  and  throws  on  the  dungheap  when  it  has  made  them 
vile.  In  its  pharisaism  it  even  has  the  insolence  to  treat  their  trade  as 
shameful,  as  though  it  were  not  just  as  shameful  to  buy  as  to  sell  in 
this  market."  Bloch  (Sexuelleben  unserer  Zeit,  Ch.  XV)  insists  that 
prostitution  must  be  ennobled,  and  that  only  so  can  it  be  even  diminished. 
Isidore  Dyer,  of  New  Orleans,  also  argues  that  we  cannot  check  prostitu- 
tion unless  we  create  "in  the  minds  of  men  and  women  a  spirit  of 
tolerance  instead  of  intolerance  of  fallen  women."  This  point  may  be 
illustrated  by  a  remark  by  the  prostitute  author  of  the  Tagebuch  einer 
Verlorenen.  "If  the  profession  of  yielding  the  body  ceased  to  be  a  shame- 
ful one,"  she  wrote,  "the  army  of  'unfortunates'  would  diminish  by  four- 
fifths — I  will  even  say  nine-tenths.  Myself,  for  example!  How  gladly 
would  I  take  a  situation  as  companion  or  governess!"  "One  of  two 
things,"  wrote  the  eminent  sociologist  Tarde  ("La  Morale  Sexuelle," 
Archives  d' Anthropologic  Criminelle,  Januai'y,  1907),  "either  prostitu- 
tion will  disappear  through  continuing  to  be  dishonorable  and  will  be 
replaced  by  some  other  institution  which  will  better  remedy  the  defects 
of  monogamous  marriage,  or  it  will  survive  by  becoming  respectable,  that 
is  to  say,  by  making  itself  respected,  whether  liked  or  disliked."  Tarde 
thought  this  might  perhaps  come  about  by  a  better  organization  of  pros- 
titutes, a  more  careful  selection  among  those  who  desired  admission  to 
their  ranks  and  the  cultivation  of  professional  virtues  which  would  raise 
their  moral  level.  "If  courtesans  fulfil  a  need,"  Balzac  had  already  said 
in  his  Physiologie  du  Mariage,  "they  must  become  an  institution." 

This  moral  attitude  is  supported  and  enforced  by  the 
inevitable  democratic  tendency  of  civilization  which,  although  it 
by  no  means  destroys  the  idea  of  class,  undermines  that  idea  as 
the  mark  of  fundamental  human  distinctions  and  renders  it 
superficial.  Prostitution  no  longer  makes  a  woman  a  slave;  it 
ought  not  to  make  her  even  a  pariah :  "My  body  is  my  own,"  said 


PROSTITUTION.  311 

the  young  German  prostitute  of  to-day,  "and  what  I  do  with  it  is 
nobody  else's  concern."  When  the  prostitute  was  literally  a 
slave  moral  duty  towards  her  was  by  no  means  necessarily 
identical  with  moral  duty  towards  the  free  woman.  But  when, 
even  in  the  same  family,  the  prostitute  may  be  separated  by  a 
great  and  impassable  social  gulf  from  her  married  sister,  it 
becomes  possible  to  see,  and  in  the  opinion  of  many  imperatively 
necessary  to  see,  that  a  readjustment  of  moral  values  is  required. 
For  thousands  of  years  prostitution  has  been  defended  on  the 
ground  that  the  prostitute  is  necessary  to  ensure  the  "purity  of 
women."  In  a  democratic  age  it  begins  to  be  realized  that 
prostitutes  also  are  women. 

The  developing  sense  of  a  fundamental  human  equality 
underlying  the  surface  divisions  of  class  tends  to  make  the 
usual  attitude  towards  the  prostitute,  the  attitude  of  her  clients 
even  more  than  that  of  society  generally,  seem  painfully  cruel. 
The  callous  and  coarsely  frivolous  tone  of  so  many  young  men 
about  prostitutes,  it  has  been  said,  is  "simply  cruelty  of  a 
peculiarly  brutal  kind,"  not  to  be  discerned  in  any  other  relation 
of  life.1  x\nd  if  this  attitude  is  cruel  even  in  speech  it  is  still 
more  cruel  in  action,  whatever  attempts  may  be  made  to  disguise 
its  cruelty. 

Canon  Lyttleton's  remarks  may  be  taken  to  refer  chiefly  to  young 
men  of  the  upper  middle  class.  Concerning  what  is  perhaps  the  usual 
attitude  of  lower  middle  class  people  towards  prostitution,  I  may  quote 
from  a  remarkable  communication  which  has  reached  me  from  Australia : 
"What  are  the  views  of  a  young  man  brought  up  in  a  middle-class  Chris- 
tian English  family  on  prostitutes?  Take  my  father,  for  instance.  He 
first  mentioned  prostitutes  to  me,  if  I  remember  rightly,  when  speaking 
of  his  life  before  marriage.  And  he  spoke  of  them  as  he  would  speak  of 
a  horse  he  had  hired,  paid  for,  and  dismissed  from  his  mind  when  it 
had  rendered  him  service.  Although  my  mother  was  so  kind  and  good 
she  spoke  of  abandoned  women  with  disgust  and  scorn  as  of  some  unclean 
animal.  As  it  flatters  vanity  and  pride  to  be  able  with  good  counte- 
nance and  universal  consent  to  look  down  on  something,  I  soon  grasped 
the  situation  and  adopted  an  attitude  which  is,  in  the  main,  that  of  most 


1  Rev.  the  Hon.  C.  Lyttleton,  Training  of  the  Young  in  Laws  of  Sex, 
p.  42. 


312  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

middle-class  Christian  Englishmen  towards  prostitutes.  But  as  puberty 
develops  this  attitude  has  to  be  accommodated  with  the  wish  to  make 
use  of  this  scum,  these  moral  lepers.  The  ordinary  young  man,  who  likes 
a  spice  of  immorality  and  has  it  when  in  town,  and  thinks  it  is  not  likely 
to  come  to  his  mother's  or  sisters'  ears,  does  not  get  over  his  arrogance 
and  disgust  or  abate  them  in  the  least.  He  takes  them  with  him,  more 
or  less  disguised,  to  the  brothel,  and  they  color  his  thoughts  and  actions 
all  the  time  he  is  sleeping  with  prostitutes,  or  kissing  them,  or  passing 
his  hands  over  them,  as  he  would  over  a  mare,  getting  as  much  as  he 
can  for  his  money.  To  tell  the  truth,  on  the  whole,  that  was  my  attitude 
too.  But  if  anyone  had  asked  me  for  the  smallest  reason  for  this 
attitude,  for  this  feeling  of  superiority,  pride,  hauteur,  and  prejudice,  I 
should,  like  any  other  'respectable'  young  man,  have  been  entirely  at  a 
loss,  and  could  only  have  gaped  foolishly." 

From  the  modern  moral  standpoint  which  now  concerns  us. 
not  only  is  the  cruelty  involved  in  the  dishonor  of  the  prostitute 
absurd,  but  not  less  absurd,  and  often  not  less  cruel,  seems  the 
honor  bestowed  on  the  respectable  women  on  the  other  side  of  the 
social  gulf.  It  is  well  recognized  that  men  sometimes  go  to 
prostitutes  to  gratify  the  excitement  aroused  by  fondling  their 
betrothed.1  As  the  emotional  and  physical  results  of  ungratified 
excitement  are  not  infrequently  more  serious  in  women  than  in 
men,  the  betrothed  women  in  these  cases  are  equally  justified  in 
seeking  relief  from  other  men,  and  the  vicious  circle  of  absurdity 
might  thus  be  completed. 

From  the  point  of  view  of  the  modern  moralist  there  is 
another  consideration  which  was  altogether  overlooked  in  the 
conventional  and  traditional  morality  we  have  inherited,  and 
was  indeed  practically  non-existent  in  the  ancient  days  when  that 
morality  was  still  a  living  reality.  Women  are  no  longer  divided 
only  into  the  two  groups  of  wives  who  are  to  be  honored,  and 
prostitutes  who  are  the  dishonored  guardians  of  that  honor;  there 
is  a  large  third  class  of  women  who  are  neither  wives  nor  prosti- 

1  See,  e.g.,  R.  W.  Taylor,  Treatise  on  Sexual  Disorders,  1897,  pp. 
74-5.  Georg  Hirth  (Wege  zur  Eeimat,  1909,  p.  619)  narrates  the  case 
of  a  young  officer  who,  being  excited  by  the  caresses  of  his  betrothed  and 
having  too  much  respect  for  her  to  go  further  than  this,  and  too  much 
respect  for  himself  to  resort  to  masturbation,  knew  nothing  better  than 
to  go  to  a  prostitute.  Syphilis  developed  a  few  days  after  the  wedding. 
Hirth  adds,  briefly,  that  the  results  were  terrible. 


PEOSTITUTION.  313 

tutes.  For  this  group  of  the  unmarried  virtuous  the  traditional 
morality  had  no  place  at  all ;  it  simply  ignored  them.  But  the 
new  moralist,  who  is  learning  to  recognize  both  the  claims  of  the 
individual  and  the  claims  of  society,  begins  to  ask  whether  on  the 
one  hand  these  women  are  not  entitled  to  the  satisfaction  of  their 
affectional  and  emotional  impulses  if  they  so  desire,  and  on  the 
other  hand  whether,  since  a  high  civilization  involves  a  diminished 
birth-rate,  the  community  is  not  entitled  to  encourage  every 
healthy  and  able-bodied  woman  to  contribute  to  maintain  the 
birth-rate  when  she  so  desires. 

All  the  considerations  briefly  indicated  in  the  preceding 
pages — the  fundamental  sense  of  human  equality  generated  by  our 
civilization,  the  repugnance  to  cruelty  which  accompanies  the 
refinement  of  urban  life,  the  ugly  contrast  of  extremes  which 
shock  our  developing  democratic  tendencies,  the  growing  sense  of 
the  rights  of  the  individual  to  authority  over  his  own  person, 
the  no  less  strongly  emphasized  right  of  the  community  to  the 
best  that  the  individual  can  yield — all  these  considerations  are 
every  day  more  strongly  influencing  the  modern  moralist  to 
assume  towards  the  prostitute  an  attitude  altogether  different 
from  that  of  the  morality  which  we  derived  from  Cato  and 
Augustine.  He  sees  the  question  in  a  larger  and  more  dynamic 
manner.  Instead  of  declaring  that  it  is  well  worth  while  to 
tolerate  and  at  the  same  time  to  contemn  the  prostitute,  in  order 
to  preserve  the  sanctity  of  the  wife  in  her  home,  he  is  not  only 
more  inclined  to  regard  each  as  the  proper  guardian  of  her  own 
moral  freedom,  but  he  is  less  certain  about  the  time-honored 
position  of  the  prostitute,  and  moreover,  by  no  means  sure  that 
the  wife  in  the  home  may  not  be  fully  as  much  in  need  of 
rescuing  as  the  prostitute  in  the  street;  he  is  prepared  to  con- 
sider whether  reform  in  this  matter  is  not  most  likely  to  take 
place  in  the  shape  of  a  fairer  apportionment  of  sexual  privileges 
and  sexual  duties  to  women  generally,  with  an  inevitably  resultant 
elevation  in  the  sexual  lives  of  men  also. 

The  revolt  of  many  serious  reformers  against  the  injustice  and 
degradation  now  involved  by  our  system  of  prostitution  is  so  profound 
that  some  have  declared  themselves  ready  to  accept  any  revolution  of 


314  PSYCHOLOGY   OP   SEX. 

ideas  which  would  bring  about  a  more  wholesome  transmutation  of  moral 
values.  "Better  indeed  were  a  saturnalia  of  free  men  and  women," 
exclaims  Edward  Carpenter  {Love's  Coming  of  Age,  p.  62),  "than  the 
spectacle  which,  as  it  is,  our  great  cities  present  at  night." 

Even  those  who  would  be  quite  content  with  as  conservative  a 
treatment  as  possible  of  social  institutions  still  cannot  fail  to  realize 
that  prostitution  is  unsatisfactory,  unless  we  are  content  to  make  very 
humble  claims  of  the  sexual  act.  "The  act  of  prostitution,"  Godfrey 
declares  ( The  Science  of  Sex,  p.  202 ) ,  "may  be  physiologically  complete, 
but  it  is  complete  in  no  other  sense.  All  the  moral  and  intellectual  fac- 
tors which  combine  with  physical  desire  to  form  the  perfect  sexual 
attraction  are  absent.  All  the  higher  elements  of  love — admiration, 
respect,  honor,  and  self-sacrificing  devotion — are  as  foreign  to  prostitu- 
tion as  to  the  egoistic  act  of  masturbation.  The  principal  drawbacks  to 
the  morality  of  the  act  lie  in  its  associations  more  than  in  the  act  itself. 
Any  affectional  quality  which  a  more  or  less  promiscuous  connection 
might  possess  is  at  once  destroyed  by  the  intrusion  of  the  monetary  ele- 
ment. In  the  resulting  degradation  the  woman  has  the  largest  share, 
since  it  makes  her  a  pariah  and  involves  her  in  all  the  hardening  and 
depraving  influences  of  social  ostracism.  But  her  degradation  only 
serves  to  render  her  influence  on  her  partners  more  demoralizing.  Pros- 
titution," he  concludes,  "has  a  strong  tendency  towards  emphasizing  the 
naturally  selfish  attitude  of  men  towards  women,  and  encouraging  them 
in  the  delusion,  born  of  unregulated  passions,  that  the  sexual  act  itself 
is  the  aim  and  end  of  the  sex  life.  Prostitution  can  therefore  make  no 
claim  to  afford  even  a  temporary  solution  to  the  sex  problem.  It  fulfils 
only  that  mission  which  has  made  it  a  'necessary  evil' — the  mission  of 
palliative  to  the  physical  rigors  of  celibacy  and  monogamy.  It  does  so 
at  the  cost  of  a  considerable  amount  of  physical  and  moral  deterioration, 
much  of  which  is  undoubtedly  due  to  the  action  of  society  in  completing 
the  degradation  of  the  prostitute  by  persistent  ostracism.  Prostitution 
was  not  so  great  an  evil  when  it  was  not  thought  so  great,  yet  even  at 
its  best  it  was  a  real  evil,  a  melancholy  and  sordid  travesty  of  sincere 
and  natural  passional  relations.  It  is  an  evil  which  we  are  bound  t» 
have  with  us  so  long  as  celibacy  is  a  custom  and  monogamy  a  law."  It 
is  the  wife  as  well  as  the  prostitute  who  is  degraded  by  a  system  which 
makes  venal  love  possible.  "The  time  has  gone  past,"  the  same  writer 
remarks  elsewhere  (p.  195)  "when  a  mere  ceremony  can  really  sanctify 
what  is  base  and  transform  lust  and  greed  into  the  sincerity  of  sexual 
affection.  If,  to  enter  into  sexual  connections  with  a  man  for  a  solely 
material  end  is  a  disgrace  to  humanity,  it  is  a  disgrace  under  the  mar- 
riage bond  just  as  much  as  apart  from  the  hypocritical  blessing  of  the 
church  or  the  law.  If  the  public  prostitute  is  a  being  who  deserves  to 
be  treated  as  a  pariah,  it  is  hopelessly  irrational  to  withhold  every  sort 


PROSTITUTION.  315 

of  moral  opprobrium  from  the  woman  who  leads  a  similar  life  under  a 
different  set  of  external  circumstances.  Either  the  prostitute  wife  must 
come  under  the  moral  ban,  or  there  must  be  an  end  to  the  complete 
ostracism  under  which  the  prostitute  labors." 

The  thinker  who  more  clearly  and  fundamentally  than  others,  and 
first  of  all,  realized  the  dynamical  relationships  of  prostitution,  as 
dependent  upon  a  change  in  the  other  social  relationships  of  life,  was 
James  Hinton.  More  than  thirty  years  ago,  in  fragmentary  writings 
that  still  remain  unpublished,  since  he  never  worked  them  into  an 
orderly  form,  Hinton  gave  vigorous  and  often  passionate  expression  to 
this  fundamental  idea.  It  may  be  worth  while  to  quote  a  few  brief  pas- 
sages from  Hinton's  MSS. :  "I  feel  that  the  laws  of  force  should  hold 
also  amid  the  waves  of  human  passion,  that  the  relations  of  mechanics 
are  true,  and  Avill  rule  also  in  human  life There  is  a  ten- 
sion, a  crushing  of  the  soul,  by  our  modern  life,  and  it  is  ready  for  a 
sudden  spring  to  a  different  order  in  which  the  forces  shall  rearrange 
themselves.  It  is  a  dynamical  question  presented  in  moral  terms. 
.  .  .  .  Keeping  a  portion  of  the  woman  population  without  prospect 
of  marriage  means  having  prostitutes,  that  is  women  as  instruments  of 
man's  mere  sensuality,  and  this  means  the  killing,  in  many  of  them,  of 
all  pure  love  or  capacity  of  it.  This  is  the  fact  we  have  to  face. 
.  .  .  .  To-day  I  saw  a  young  woman  whose  life  was  being  consumed 
by  her  want  of  love,  a  case  of  threatened  utter  misery:  now  see  the 
price  at  which  we  purchase  her  ill-health;  for  her  ill-health  we  pay  the 
crushing  of  another  girl  into  hell.  We  give  that  for  it;  her  wretched- 
ness of  soul  and  body  are  bought  by  prostitution;  we  have  prostitutes 
made  for  that We  devote  some  women  recklessly  to  perdi- 
tion to  make  a  hothouse  Heaven  for  the  rest One  wears 

herself  out  in  vainly  trying  to  endure  pleasures  she  is  not  strong  enough 
to  enjoy,  while  other  women  are  perishing  for  lack  of  these  very  pleas- 
ures.    If  marriage  is  this,  is  it  not  embodied  lust  ?     The  happy  Christian 

homes  are  the  true  dark  places  of   the  earth Prostitution 

for  man,  restraint  for  woman — they  are  two  sides  of  the  same  thing,  and 
both  are  denials  of  love,  like  luxury  and  asceticism.  The  mountains  of 
restraint  must  be  used  to  fill  up  the  abysses  of  luxury." 

Some  of  Hinton's  views  were  set  forth  by  a  writer  intimately 
acquainted  with  him  in  a  pamphlet  entitled  The  Future  of  Marriage:  An 
Eirenicon  for  a  Question  of  To-day,  by  a  Respectable  Woman  (1885). 
"When  once  the  conviction  is  forced  home  upon  the  'good'  women,"  the 
writer  remarks,  "that  their  place  of  honor  and  privilege  rests  upon  the 
degradation  of  others  as  its  basis,  they  will  never  rest  till  they  have 
either  abandoned  it  or  sought  for  it  some  other  pedestal.  If  our  inflexi- 
ble marriage  system  has  for  its  essential  condition  the  existence  side  by 
side  with  it  of  prostitution,  then  one  of  two  things  follows:    either  pros- 


316  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

titution  must  be  shown  to  be  compatible  with  the  well-being,  moral  and 
physical,  of  the  women  who  practice  it,  or  our  marriage  system  must  be 
condemned.  If  it  was  clearly  put  before  anyone,  he  could  not  seriously 
assert  that  to  be  'virtue'  which  could  only  be  practiced  at  the  expense 

of  another's  vice Whilst  the  laws  of  physics  are  becoming 

so  universally  recognized  that  no  one  dreams  of  attempting  to  annihilate 
a  particle  of  matter,  or  of  force,  yet  we  do  not  instinctively  apply  the 
same  conception  to  moral  forces,  but  think  and  act  as  if  we  could  simply 
do  away  with  an  evil,  while  leaving  unchanged  that  which  gives  it  its 
strength.  This  is  the  only  view  of  the  social  problem  which  can  give  us 
hope.  That  prostitution  should  simply  cease,  leaving  everything  else  as 
it  is,  would  be  disastrous  if  it  were  possible.  But  it  is  not  possible. 
The  weakness  of  all  existing  efforts  to  put  down  prostitution  is  that  they 
are  directed  against  it  as  an  isolated  thing,  whereas  it  is  only  one  of 
the  symptoms  proceeding  from  a  common  disease." 

Ellen  Key,  who  during  recent  years  has  been  the  chief  apostle  of 
a  gospel  of  sexual  morality  based  on  the  needs  of  women  as  the  mothers 
of  the  race,  has,  in  a  somewhat  similar  spirit,  denounced  alike  prostitu- 
tion and  rigid  marriage,  declaring  ( in  her  Essays  on  Love  and  Marriage ) 
that  "the  development  of  erotic  personal  consciousness  is  as  much 
hindered  by  socially  regulated  'morality'  as  by  socially  regulated  'im- 
morality,' "  and  that  "the  two  lowest  and  socially  sanctioned  expressions 
of  sexual  dualism,  rigid  marriage  and  prostitution,  will  gradually  become 
impossible,  because  with  the  conquest  of  the  idea  of  erotic  unity  they 
will  no  longer  correspond  to  human  needs." 

We  may  sum  up  the  present  situation  as  regards  prostitution 
by  saying  that  on  the  one  hand  there  is  a  tendency  for  its  eleva- 
tion, in  association  with  the  growing  humanity  and  refinement 
of  civilization,  characteristics  which  must  inevitably  tend  to  mark 
more  and  more  both  those  women  who  become  prostitutes  and 
those  men  who  seek  them;  on  the  other  hand,  but  perhaps 
through  the  same  dynamic  force,  there  is  a  tendency  towards  the 
slow  elimination  of  prostitution  by  the  successful  competi- 
tion of  higher  and  purer  methods  of  sexual  relationship  freed 
from  pecuniary  considerations.  This  refinement  and  humaniza- 
tion,  this  competition  by  better  forms  of  sexual  love,  are  indeed 
an  essential  part  of  progress  as  civilization  becomes  more  truly 
sound,  wholesome,  and  sincere. 

This  moral  change  cannot,  it  seems  probable,  fail  to  be 
accompanied  by  the  realization  that  the  facts  of  human  life  are 


PROSTITUTION.  317 

more  important  than  the  forms.  For  all  changes  from  lower  to 
higher  social  forms,  from  savagery  to  civilization,  are  accom- 
panied— in  so  far  as  they  are  vital  changes — by  a  slow  and  painful 
groping  towards  the  truth  that  it  is  only  in  natural  relations  that 
sanity  and  sanctity  can  be  found,  for,  as  Nietzsche  said,  the 
"return"  to  Nature  should  rather  be  called  the  "ascent."  Only  so 
can  we  achieve  the  final  elimination  from  our  hearts  of  that 
clinging  tradition  that  there  is  any  impurity  or  dishonor  in  acts 
of  love  for  which  the  reasonable,  and  not  merely  the  conventional, 
conditions  have  been  fulfilled.  For  it  is  vain  to  attempt  to 
cleanse  our  laws,  or  even  our  by-laws,  until  we  have  first  cleansed 
our  hearts. 

It  would  be  out  of  place  here  to  push  further  the  statement 
of  the  moral  question  as  it  is  to-day  beginning  to  shape  itself  in 
the  sphere  of  sex.  In  a  psychological  discussion  we  are  only  con- 
cerned to  set  down  the  actual  attitude  of  the  moralist,  and  of 
civilization.  The  practical  outcome  of  that  attitude  must  be 
left  to  moralists  and  sociologists  and  the  community  generally  to 
work  out. 

Our  inquiry  has  also,  it  may  be  hoped,  incidentally  tended 
to  show  that  in  practically  dealing  with  the  question  of  prostitu- 
tion it  is  pre-eminently  necessary  to  remember  the  warning 
which,  as  regards  many  other  social  problems,  has  been  em- 
bodied by  Herbert  Spencer  in  his  famous  illustration  of  the 
bent  iron  plate.  In  trving  to  make  the  bent  plate  smooth,  it  is 
useless,  Spencer  pointed  out,  to  hammer  directly  on  the  buckled 
up  part ;  if  we  do  so  we  merely  find  that  we  have  made  matterb 
worse ;  our  hammering,  to  be  effective,  must  be  around,  and  not 
directly  on,  the  offensive  elevation  we  wish  to  reduce;  only  so 
can  the  iron  plate  be  hammered  smooth.1     But  this  elementary 


1  It  is  an  oft-quoted  passage,  but  can  scarcely  be  quoted  too  often: 
"You  see  that  this  wrought-iron  plate  is  not  quite  flat:  it  sticks  up  a 
little,  here  towards  the  left — 'cockles,'  as  we  say.  How  shall  we  flatten 
it?  Obviously,  you  reply,  by  hitting  down  on  the  part  that  is  prominent. 
Well,  here  is  a  hammer,  and  I  give  the  plate  a  blow  as  you  advise. 
Harder,  you  say.  Still  no  effect.  Another  stroke?  Well,  there  is  one, 
and  another,  and  another.  The  prominence  remains,  you  see:  the  evil 
is  as  great  as  ever — greater,  indeed.  But  that  is  not  all.  Look  at  the 
warp  which  the  plate  has  got  near  the  opposite  edge.     Where  it  was 


318  PSYCHOLOGY   OF    SEX. 

law  has  not  been  understood  by  moralists.  The  plain,  prac- 
tical, common-sense  reformer,  as  he  fancied  himself  to  be — 
from  the  time  of  Charlemagne  onwards — has  over  and  over  again 
brought  his  heavy  fist  directly  down  on  to  the  evil  of  prostitution 
and  has  always  made  matters  worse.  It  is  only  by  wisely  working 
outside  and  around  the  evil  that  we  can  hope  to  lessen  it  effect- 
ually. By  aiming  to  develop  and  raise  the  relationships  of  men 
to  women,  and  of  women  to  women,  by  modifying  our  notions  of 
sexual  relationships,  and  by  introducing  a  saner  and  truer  con- 
ception of  womanhood  and  of  the  responsibilities  of  women  as 
well  as  of  men,  by  attaining,  socially  as  well  as  economically,  a 
higher  level  of  human  living — it  is  only  by  such  methods  as  these 
that  we  can  reasonably  expect  to  see  any  diminution  and  allevia- 
tion of  the  evil  of  prostitution.  So  long  as  we  are  incapable  of 
such  methods  we  must  be  content  with  the  prostitution  we 
deserve,  learning  to  treat  it  with  the  pity,  and  the  respect,  which 
so  intimate  a  failure  of  our  civilization  is  entitled  to. 


flat  before  it  is  now  curved.  A  pretty  bungle  we  have  made  of  it. 
Instead  of  curing  the  original  defect  we  have  produced  a  second.  Had 
we  asked  an  artisan  practiced  in  'planishing,'  as  it  is  called,  he  would 
have  told  us  that  no  good  was  to  be  done,  but  only  mischief,  by  hitting 
down  on  the  projecting  part.  He  would  have  taught  us  how  to  give 
variously-directed  and  specially-adjusted  blows  with  a  hammer  else- 
where: so  attacking  the  evil,  not  by  direct,  but  by  indirect  actions.  The 
required  process  is  less  simple  than  you  thought.  Even  a  sheet  of  metal 
is  not  to  be  successfully  dealt  with  after  those  common-sense  methods 
in  which  you  have  so  much  confidence.  What,  then,  shall  we  say  about 
a  society?  ....  Is  humanity  more  readily  straightened  than  an 
iron  plate?"  (The  Study  of  Sociology,  p.  270.) 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

THE  CONQUEST  OF  THE  VENEREAL  DISEASES. 

The  Significance  of  the  Venereal  Diseases — The  History  of  Syphilis 
— The  Problem  of  Its  Origin — The  Social  Gravity  of  Syphilis — The  Social 
Dangers  of  Gonorrhcea — The  Modern  Change  in  the  Methods  of  Combat- 
ing Venereal  Diseases — Causes  of  the  Decay  of  the  System  of  Police 
Regulation — Necessity  of  Facing  the  Facts — The  Innocent  Victims  of 
Venereal  Diseases — Diseases  Not  Crimes — The  Principle  of  Notification — 
The  Scandinavian  System — Gratuitous  Treatment — Punishment  for 
Transmitting  Venereal  Diseases — Sexual  Education  in  Relation  to  Ven- 
ereal Diseases — Lectures,  Etc. — Discussion  in  Novels  and  on  the  Stage — 
The  "Disgusting"  Not  the  "Immoral." 

It  may,  perhaps,  excite  surprise  that  in  the  preceding  dis- 
cussion of  prostitution  scarcely  a  word  has  been  said  of  venereal 
diseases.  In  the  eyes  of  many  people,  the  question  of  prostitution 
is  simply  the  question  of  syphilis.  But  from  the  psychological 
point  of  view  with  which  we  are  directly  concerned,  as  from  the 
moral  point  of  view  with  which  we  cannot  fail  to  be  indirectly 
concerned,  the  question  of  the  diseases  which  may  be,  and  so 
frequently  are,  associated  with  prostitution  cannot  be  placed  in 
the  first  line  of  significance.  The  two  questions,  however 
intimately  they  may  be  mingled,  are  fundamentally  distinct. 
Not  only  would  venereal  diseases  still  persist  even  though  prosti- 
tution had  absolutely  ceased,  but,  on  the  other  hand,  when 
we  have  brought  syphilis  under  the  same  control  as  we  have 
brought  the  somewhat  analogous  disease  of  leprosy,  the  problem 
of  prostitution  would  still  remain. 

Yet,  even  from  the  standpoint  which  we  here  occupy,  it  is 
scarcely  possible  to  ignore  the  question  of  venereal  disease,  for  the 
psychological  and  moral  aspects  of  prostitution,  and  even  the 
whole  question  of  the  sexual  relationships,  are,  to  some  extent, 
affected  by  the  existence  of  the  serious  diseases  which  are  specially 
liable  to  be  propagated  by  sexual  intercourse. 

Fournier,  one  of  the  leading  authorities  on  this  subject,  has 
well  said  that  syphilis,  alcoholism,  and  tuberculosis  are  the  three 

(319) 


320  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

modern  plagues.  At  a  much  earlier  period  (1851)  Schopen- 
hauer in  Parerga  und  Paralipomena  had  expressed  the  opinion 
that  the  two  things  which  mark  modern  social  life,  in  distinction 
from  that  of  antiquity,  and  to  the  advantage  of  the  latter,  are 
the  knightly  principle  of  honor  and  venereal  disease ;  together,  he 
added,  they  have  poisoned  life,  and  introduced  a  hostile  and  even 
diabolical  element  into  the  relations  of  the  sexes,  which  has 
indirectly  affected  all  other  social  relationships.1  It  is  like  a 
merchandise,  says  Havelburg,  of  syphilis,  which  civilization  has 
everywhere  carried,  so  that  only  a  very  few  remote  districts  of  the 
globe  (as  in  Central  Africa  and  Central  Brazil)  are  to-day  free 
from  it.2 

It  is  undoubtedly  true  that  in  the  older  civilized  countries 
the  manifestations  of  syphilis,  though  still  severe  and  a  cause  of 
physical  deterioration  in  the  individual  and  the  race,  are  less 
severe  than  they  were  even  a  generation  ago.3  This  is  partly  the 
result  of  earlier  and  better  treatment,  partly,  it  is  possible,  the 
result  also  of  the  syphilization  of  the  race,  some  degree  of 
immunity  having  now  become  an  inherited  possession,  although 
it  must  be  remembered  that  an  attack  of  syphilis  does  not 
necessarily  confer  immunity  from  the  actual  attack  of  the 
disease  even  in  the  same  individual.  But  it  must  be  added  that, 
even  though  it  has  become  less  severe,  syphilis,  in  the  opinion  of 
many,  is  nevertheless  still  spreading,  even  in  the  chief  centres  of 
civilization :  this  has  been  noted  alike  in  Paris  and  in  London.4 


1  It  is  probable  tbat  Schopenhauer  felt  a  more  than  merely  specula- 
tive interest  in  this  matter.  Bloch  has  shown  good  reason  for  believing 
that  Schopenhauer  himself  contracted  syphilis  in  1813,  and  that  this  was 
a  factor  in  constituting  his  conception  of  the  world  and  in  confirming 
his  constitutional  pessimism  (Medizinische  Klinik,  Nos.  25  and  26,  1906). 

2  Havelburg,  in  Senator  and  Kaminer,  Health  and  Disease  in  Rela- 
tion to  Marriage,  vol.  i,  pp.  186-189. 

3  This  is  the  very  definite  opinion  of  Lowndes  after  an  experience 
of  fifty-four  years  in  the  treatment  of  venereal  diseases  in  Liverpool 
(British  Medical  Journal,  Feb.  9,  1907,  p.  334).  It  is  further  indicated 
by  the  fact  (if  it  is  a  real  fact)  that  since  1876  there  has  been  a  decline 
of  both  the  infantile  and  general  mortality  from  syphilis  in  England. 

4  "There  is  no  doubt  whatever  that  syphilis  is  on  the  increase  in 
London,  judging  from  hospital  work  alone,"  says  Pernet  (British  Medical 
Journal,  March  30,  1907).  Syphilis  was  evidently  very  prevalent,  how- 
ever, a  century  or  two  ago,  and  there  is  no  ground  for  asserting  positively 
that  it  is  more  prevalent  to-day. 


THE    CONQUEST    OF    THE    VENEREAL    DISEASES.  321 

According  to  the  belief  which,  is  now  tending  to  prevail, 
syphilis  was  brought  to  Europe  at  the  end  of  the  fifteenth  century 
by  the  first  discoverers  of  America.  In  Seville,  the  chief 
European  port  for  America,  it  was  known  as  the  Indian  disease, 
but  when  Charles  VIII  and  his  army  first  brought  it  to  Italy  in 
1495,  although  this  connection  with  the  French  was  only 
accidental,  it  was  called  the  Gallic  disease,  "a  monstrous  disease/' 
said  Cataneus,  "never  seen  in  previous  centuries  and  altogether 
unknown  in  the  world." 

The  synonyms  of  syphilis  were  at  first  almost  innumerable. 
It  was  in  his  Latin  poem  Syphilis  sive  Morbus  Gallicus,  written 
before  1521  and  published  at  Verona  in  1530,  that  Fracastorus 
finally  gave  the  disease  its  now  universally  accepted  name,  invent- 
ing a  romantic  myth  to  account  for  its  origin. 

Although  the  weight  of  authoritative  opinion  now  seems  to  incline 
towards  the  belief  that  syphilis  was  brought  to  Europe  from  America, 
on  the  discovery  of  the  New  World,  it  is  only  within  quite  recent  years 
that  that  belief  has  gained  ground,  and  it  scarcely  even  yet  seems  cer- 
tain that  what  the  Spaniards  brought  back  from  America  was  really  a 
disease  absolutely  new  to  the  Old  World,  and  not  a  more  virulent  form 
of  an  old  disease  of  which  the  manifestations  had  become  benign.  Buret, 
for  instance  (Le  Syphilis  Aujourd'hui  et  cnea  tes  Anciens,  1890),  who 
some  years  ago  reached  "the  deep  conviction  that  syphilis  dates  from  the 
creation  of  man,"  and  believed,  from  a  minute  study  of  classic  authors, 
that  syphilis  existed  in  Rome  under  the  Caesars,  was  of  opinion  that  it 
has  broken  out  at  different  places  and  at  different  times,  in  epidemic 
bursts  exhibiting  different  combinations  of  its  manifold  symptoms,  so 
that  it  passed  unnoticed  at  ordinary  times,  and  at  the  times  of  its  more 
intense  manifestation  was  looked  upon  as  a  hitherto  unknown  disease. 
It  was  thus  regarded  in  classic  times,  he  considers,  as  coming  from 
Egypt,  though  he  looked  upon  its  real  home  as  Asia.  Leopold  Gliick 
has  likewise  quoted  (ArcMv  fur  Dermatologie  und  Syphilis,  January, 
1899)  passages  from  the  medical  epigrams  of  a  sixteenth  century  phy- 
sician, Gabriel  Ayala,  declaring  that  syphilis  is  not  really  a  new  disease, 
though  popularly  supposed  to  be  so,  but  an  old  disease  which  has  broken 
out  with  hitherto  unknown  violence.  There  is,  however,  no  conclusive 
reason  for  believing  that  syphilis  was  known  at  all  in  classic  antiquity. 
A.  V.  Notthaft  ("Die  Legende  von  der  Althertums-syphilis,"  in  the 
Eindfleisch  Festschrift,  1907,  pp.  377-592)  has  critically  investigated 
the  passages  in  classic  authors  which  were  supposed  by  Eosenbaum,  Buret, 

21  ' 


322  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   SEX. 

Proksch  and  others  to  refer  to  syphilis.  It  is  quite  true,  Notthaft 
admits,  that  many  of  these  passages  might  possibly  refer  to  syphilis, 
and  one  or  two  would  even  better  fit  syphilis  than  any  other  disease. 
But,  on  the  whole,  they  furnish  no  proof  at  all,  and  no  syphilologist,  he 
concludes,  has  ever  succeeded  in  demonstrating  that  syphilis  was  known 
in  antiquity.  That  belief  is  a  legend.  The  most  damning  argument 
against  it,  Notthaft  points  out,  is  the  fact  that,  although  in  antiquity 
there  were  great  physicians  who  were  keen  observers,  not  one  of  them 
gives  any  description  of  the  primary,  secondary,  tertiary,  and  congenital 
forms  of  this  disease.  China  is  frequently  mentioned  as  the  original 
home  of  syphilis,  but  this  belief  is  also  quite  without  basis,  and  the 
Japanese  physician,  Okamura,  has  shown  (Monatsschrift  filr  praktische 
Dermatologie,  vol.  xxviii,  pp.  296  et  seq.)  that  Chinese  records  reveal 
nothing  relating  to  syphilis  earlier  than  the  sixteenth  century.  At  the 
Paris  Academy  of  Medicine  in  1900  photographs  from  Egypt  were  ex- 
hibited by  Fouquet  of  human  remains  which  date  from  B.  C.  2400,  show- 
ing bone  lesions  which  seemed  to  be  clearly  syphilitic;  Fournier,  however, 
one  of  the  greatest  of  authorities,  considered  that  the  diagnosis  of  syph- 
ilis could  not  be  maintained  until  other  conditions  liable  to  produce  some- 
what similar  bone  lesions  had  been  eliminated  (British  Medical  Journal, 
September  29,  1900,  p.  946).  In  Florida  and  various  regions  of  Central 
America,  in  undoubtedly  pre-Columbian  burial  places,  diseased  bone8 
have  been  found  which  good  authorities  have  declared  could  not  be  any- 
thing else  than  syphilitic  {e.g.,  British  Medical  Journal,  November  20, 
1897,  p.  1487),  though  it  may  be  noted  that  so  recently  as  1899  the  cau- 
tious Virchow  stated  that  pre-Columbian  syphilis  in  America  was  still  for 
him  an  open  question  {Zeitschrift  filr  Ethnologie,  Heft  2  and  3,  1899,  p. 
216).  From  another  side,  Seler,  the  distinguished  authority  on  Mexican 
antiquity,  shows  {Zeitschrift  filr  Ethnologie,  1895,  Heft  5,  p.  449)  that 
the  ancient  Mexicans  were  acquainted  with  a  disease  which,  as  they 
described  it,  might  well  have  been  syphilis.  It  is  obvious,  however,  that 
while  the  difficulty  of  demonstrating  syphilitic  diseased  bones  in  America 
is  as  great  as  in  Europe,  the  demonstration,  however  complete,  would  not 
suffice  to  show  that  the  disease  had  not  already  an  existence  also  in  the 
Old  World.  The  plausible  theory  of  Ayala  that  fifteenth  century  syphilis 
was  a  virulent  recrudescence  of  an  ancient  disease  has  frequently  been 
revived  in  more  modern  times.  Thus  J.  Knott  ("The  Origin  of  Syphilis," 
New  York  Medical  Journal,  October  31,  1908)  suggests  that  though  not 
new  in  fifteenth  century  Europe,  it  was  then  imported  afresh  in  a  form 
rendered  more  aggravated  by  coming  from  an  exotic  race,  as  is  believed 
often  to  be  the  case. 

It  was  in  the  eighteenth  century  that  Jean  Astruc  began  the 
rehabilitation  of  the  belief  that  syphilis  is  really  a  comparatively  mod- 
ern disease  of  American  origin,  and  since  then  various  authorities  of 


THE    CONQUEST    OF    THE    VENEREAL    DISEASES.  323 

weight  have  given  their  adherence  to  this  view.  It  is  to  the  energy  and 
learning  of  Dr.  Iwan  Bloch,  of  Berlin  (the  first  volume  of  whose  impor- 
tant work,  Der  Ur sprung  der  Syphilis,  was  published  in  1901)  that  we 
owe  the  fullest  statement  of  the  evidence  in  favor  of  the  American  origin 
of  syphilis.  Bloch  regards  Ruy  Diaz  de  Isla,  a  distinguished  Spanish 
physician,  as  the  weightiest  witness  for  the  Indian  origin  of  the  disease, 
and  concludes  that  it  was  brought  to  Europe  by  Columbus's  men  from 
Central  America,  more  precisely  from  the  Island  of  Haiti,  to  Spain  in 
1493  and  1494,  and  immediately  afterwards  was  spread  by  the  armies  of 
Charles  VIII  in  an  epidemic  fashion  over  Italy  and  the  other  countries 
of  Europe. 

It  may  be  added  that  even  if  we  have  to  accept  the  theory  that  the 
central  regions  of  America  constitute  the  place  of  origin  of  European 
syphilis,  we  still  have  to  recognize  that  syphilis  has  spread  in  the  North 
American  continent  very  much  more  slowly  and  partially  than  it  has 
in  Europe,  and  even  at  the  present  day  there  are  American  Indian 
tribes  among  whom  it  is  unknown.  Holder,  on  the  basis  of  his  own 
experiences  among  Indian  tribes,  as  well  as  of  wide  inquiries  among 
agency  physicians,  prepared  a  table  showing  that  among  some  thirty 
tribes  and  groups  of  tribes,  eighteen  were  almost  or  entirely  free  from 
venereal  disease,  while  among  thirteen  it  was  very  prevalent.  Almost 
without  exception,  the  tribes  where  syphilis  is  rare  or  unknown  refuse 
sexual  intercourse  with  strangers,  while  those  among  whom  such  disease 
is  prevalent  are  morally  lax.  It  is  the  whites  who  are  the  source  of 
infection  among  these  tribes  (A.  B.  Holder,  "Gynecic  Notes  Among  the 
American  Indians,"  American  Journal  of  Obstetrics,  1892,  No.  1). 

Syphilis  is  only  one,  certainly  the  most  important,  of  a  group 
of  three  entirely  distinct  "venereal  diseases"  which  have  only 
been  distinguished  in  recent  times,  and  so  far  as  their  precise 
nature  and  causation  are  concerned,  are  indeed  only  to-day  begin- 
ning to  be  understood,  although  two  of  them  were  certainly 
known  in  antiquity.  It  is  but  seventy  years  ago  since  Eicord,  the 
great  French  syphilologist,  following  Bassereau,  first  taught  the 
complete  independence  of  syphilis  both  from  gonorrhoea  and  soft 
chancre,  at  the  same  time  expounding  clearly  the  three  stages, 
primary,  secondary  and  tertiary,  through  which  syphilitic  mani- 
festations tend  to  pass,  while  the  full  extent  of  tertiary  syphilitic 
symptoms  is  scarcely  yet  grasped,  and  it  is  only  to-day  beginning 
to  be  generally  realized  that  two  of  the  most  prevalent  and  serious 
diseases  of  the  brain  and  nervous  system — general  paralysis  and 


324  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   SEX. 

tabes  dorsalis  or  locomotor  ataxia — liave  their  predominant 
though  not  sole  and  exclusive  cause  in  the  invasion  of  the 
syphilitic  poison  many  years  before.  In  1879  a  new  stage  of 
more  precise  knowledge  of  the  venereal  diseases  began  with 
ISTeisser's  discovery  of  the  gonococcus  which  is  the  specific  cause 
of  gonorrhoea.  This  was  followed  a  few  years  later  by  the  dis- 
covery by  Ducrey  and  Unna  of  the  bacillus  of  soft  chancre,  the 
least  important  of  the  venereal  diseases  because  exclusively  local 
in  its  effects.  Finally,  in  1905 — after  Metchnikoff  had  prepared 
the  way  by  succeeding  in  carrying  syphilis  from  man  to  monkey, 
and  Lassar,  by  inoculation,  from  monkey  to  monkey — Fritz 
Schaudinn  made  his  great  discovery  of  the  protozoal  Spirochceta 
pallida  (since  sometimes  called  Treponema  pallidum),  which  is 
now  generally  regarded  as  the  cause  of  syphilis,  and  thus  revealed 
the  final  hiding  place  of  one  of  the  most  dangerous  and  insidious 
foes  of  humanity.1 

There  is  no  more  subtle  poison  than  that  of  syphilis.  It  is 
not,  like  small-pox  or  typhoid,  a  disease  which  produces  a  brief 
and  sudden  storm,  a  violent  struggle  with  the  forces  of  life,  in 
which  it  tends,  even  without  treatment,  provided  the  organism 
is  healthy,  to  succumb,  leaving  little  or  no  traces  of  its  ravages 
behind.  It  penetrates  ever  deeper  and  deeper  into  the  organism, 
with  the  passage  of  time  leading  to  ever  new  manifestations,  and 
no  tissue  is  safe  from  its  attack.  And  so  subtle  is  this  all-per- 
vading poison  that  though  its  outward  manifestations  are 
amenable  to  prolonged  treatment,  it  is  often  difficult  to  say  that 
the  poison  has  been  finally  killed  out.2 

The  immense  importance  of  syphilis,  and  the  chief  reason 


i  See,  e.g.,  A.  Neisser,  Die  experimentelle  Syphilisforschung,  1906, 
and  E.  Hoffmann  (who  was  associated  with  Sehaudinn's  discovery),  Die 
Aetiologie  der  Syphilis,  1906;  D'Arcy  Power,  A  System  of  Syphilis,  190S, 
etc.;  F.  W.  Mott,  "Pathology  of  Syphilis  in  the  Light  of  Modern  Re- 
search," British  Medical  Journal,  February  20,  1909;  also,  Archives  of 
Neurology  and  Psychiatry,  vol.  iv,  1909. 

2  There  is  some  difference  of  opinion  on  this  point,  and  though  it 
seems  probable  that  early  and  thorough  treatment  usually  cures  the  dis- 
ease in  a  few  years  and  renders  further  complications  highly  improbable, 
it  is  not  possible,  even  under  the  most  favorable  circumstanecs,  to  speak 
with  absolute  certainty  as  to  the  future. 


THE    CONQUEST    OF    THE    VENEEEAL    DISEASES.  325 

why  it  is  necessary  to  consider  it  here,  lies  in  the  fact  that  its 
results  are  not  confined  to  the  individual  himself,  nor  even  to  the 
persons  to  whom  he  may  impart  it  by  the  contagion  due  to  con- 
tact in  or  out  of  sexual  relationships :  it  affects  the  offspring,  and 
it  affects  the  power  to  produce  offspring.  It  attacks  men  and 
women  at  the  centre  of  life,  as  the  progenitors  of  the  coming  race, 
inflicting  either  sterility  or  the  tendency  to  aborted  and  diseased 
products  of  conception.  The  father  alone  can  perhaps  transmit 
syphilis  to  his  child,  even  though  the  mother  escapes  infection, 
and  the  child  born  of  syphilitic  parents  may  come  into  the  world 
apparently  healthy  only  to  reveal  its  syphilitic  origin  after  a 
period  of  months  or  even  years.  Thus  syphilis  is  probably  a  main 
cause  of  the  enfeeblement  of  the  race.1 

Alike  in  the  individual  and  in  his  offspring  syphilis  shows 
its  deteriorating  effects  on  all  the  structures  of  the  body,  but 
especially  on  the  brain  and  nervous  system.  There  are,  as  has 
been  pointed  out  by  Mott,  a  leading  authority  in  this  matter,2 
five  ways  in  which  syphilis  affects  the  brain  and  nervous  system : 
(1)  by  moral  shock;  (.2)  by  the  effects  of  the  poison  in  produc- 
ing anaemia  and  impaired  general  nutrition;  (3)  by  causing 
inflammation  of  the  membranes  and  tissues  of  the  brain;  (4)  by 
producing  arterial  degeneration,  leading  on  to  brain-softening, 
paralysis,  and  dementia;  (5)  as  a  main  cause  of  the  para- 
syphilitic  affections  of  general  paralysis  and  tabes  dorsalis. 

It  is  only  within  recent  years  that  medical  men  have  recog- 
nized the  preponderant  part  played  by  acquired  or  inherited 
syphilis  in  producing  general  paralysis,  which  so  largely  helps 
to  fill  lunatic  asylums,  and  tabes  dorsalis  which  is  the  most 
important  disease  of  the  spinal  cord.     Even  to-day  it  can  scarcely 


i  "That  syphilis  has  been,  and  is,  one  of  the  chief  causes  of  physical 
degeneration  in  England  cannot  be  denied,  and  it  is  a  fact  that  is 
acknowledged  on  all  sides,"  writes  Lieutenant-Colonel  Lambkin,  the 
medical  officer  in  command  of  the  London  Military  Hospital  for  Venereal 
Diseases.  "To  grapple  with  the  treatment  of  syphilis  among  the  civil 
population  of  England  ought  to  be  the  chief  object  of  those  interested  in 
that  most  burning  question,  the  physical  degeneration  of  our  race" 
{British  Medical  Journal,  August  19,  1905). 

2F.  W.  Mott,  "Syphilis  as  a  Cause  of  Insanity,"  British  Medical 
Journal,  October  18,  1902.  ' 


326  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   SEX. 

be  said  that  there  is  complete  agreement  as  to  the  supreme  im- 
portance of  the  factor  of  syphilis  in  these  diseases.  There  can, 
however,  be  little  doubt  that  in  about  ninety-five  per  cent,  at 
least  of  cases  of  general  paralysis  syphilis  is  present.1 

Syphilis  is  not  indeed  by  itself  an  adequate  cause  of  general 
paralysis  for  among  many  savage  peoples  syphilis  is  very  common 
while  general  paralysis  is  very  rare.  It  is,  as  Krafft-Ebing  was 
accustomed  to  say,  syphilization  and  civilization  working  together 
which  produce  general  paralysis,  perhaps  in  many  cases,  there  is 
reason  for  thinking,  on  a  nervous  soil  that  is  hereditarily 
degenerated  to  some  extent;  this  is  shown  by  the  abnormal 
prevalence  of  congenital  stigmata  of  degeneration  found  in  gen- 
eral paralytics  by  Nacke  and  others.  "Paralyticus  nascitur  atque 
fit,"  according  to  the  dictum  of  Obersteiner.  Once  undermined  by 
syphilis,  the  deteriorated  brain  is  unable  to  resist  the  jars  and 
strains  of  civilized  life,  and  the  result  is  general  paralysis,  truly 
described  as  "one  of  the  most  terrible  scourges  of  modern  times." 
In  1902  the  Psychological  Section  of  the  British  Medical  Asso- 
ciation, embodying  the  most  competent  English  authority  on  this 
question,  unanimously  passed  a  resolution  recommending  that 
the  attention  of  the  Legislature  and  other  public  bodies  should  be 
called  to  the  necessity  for  immediate  action  in  view  of  the  fact 
that  "general  paralysis,  a  very  grave  and  frequent  form  of  brain 
disease,  together  with  other  varieties  of  insanity,  is  largely  due 
to  syphilis,  and  is  therefore  preventable."  Yet  not  a  single  step 
has  yet  been  taken  in  this  direction. 

The  dangers  of  syphilis  lie  not  alone  in  its  potency  and  its 
persistence  but  also  in  its  prevalence.  It  is  difficult  to  state  the 
exact  incidence  of  syphilis,  but  a  great  many  partial  investigations 
have  been  made  in  various  countries,  and  it  would  appear  that 


i  It  can  seldom  be  proved  in  more  than  eighty  per  cent,  of  eases, 
but  in  twenty  per  cent,  of  old  syphilitic  cases  it  is  commonly  impossible 
to  find  traces  of  the  disease  or  to  obtain  a  history  of  it.  Crocker  found 
that  it  was  only  in  eighty  per  cent,  of  cases  of  absolutely  certain  syphi- 
litic skin  diseases  that  he  could  obtain  a  history  of  syphilitic  infection, 
and  Mott  found  exactly  the  same  percentage  in  absolutely  certain  syphi- 
litic lesions  of  the  brain;  Mott  believes  {e.g.,  "Syphilis  in  Relation  to 
the  Nervous  System,"  British  Medical  Journal,  January  4,  1908)  that 
syphilis  is  the  essential  cause  of  general  paralysis  and  tabes. 


THE    CONQUEST    OE    THE    VENEREAL    DISEASES.  327 

from  five  to  twenty  per  cent,  of  the  population  in  European 
countries  is  syphilitic,  while  about  fifteen  per  cent,  of  the 
syphilitic  cases  die  from  causes  directly  or  indirectly  due  to  the 
disease.1  In  France  generally,  Fournier  estimates  that  seventeen 
per  cent,  of  the  whole  population  have  had  syphilis,  and  at 
Toulouse,  Audry  considers  that  eighteen  per  cent,  of  all  his 
patients  are  syphilitic.  In  Copenhagen,  where  notification  is 
obligatory,  over  four  per  cent,  of  the  population  are  said  to  be 
syphilitic.  In  America  a  committee  of  the  Medical  Society  of 
New  York,  appointed  to  investigate  the  question,  reported  as  the 
result  of  exhaustive  inquiry  that  in  the  city  of  New  York  not 
less  than  a  quarter  of  a  million  of  cases  of  venereal  disease 
occurred  every  year,  and  a  leading  New  York  dermatologist  has 
stated  that  among  the  better  class  families  he  knows  intimately 
at  least  one-third  of  the  sons  have  had  syphilis.  In  Germany 
eight  hundred  thousand  cases  of  venereal  disease  are  by  one 
authority  estimated  to  occur  yearly,  and  in  the  larger  universities 
twenty-five  per  cent,  of  the  students  are  infected  every  term, 
venereal  disease  being,  however,  specially  common  among  students. 
The  yearly  number  of  men  invalided  in  the  German  army  by 
venereal  diseases  equals  a  third  of  the  total  number  wounded  in  the 
Franco-Prussian  war.  Yet  the  German  army  stands  fairly  high 
as  regards  freedom  from  venereal  disease  when  compared  with  the 
British  army  which  is  more  syphilized  than  any  other  European 
army.2     The  British  army,  however,  being  professional  and  not 


1  Audry,  La  Semaine  Medicate,  June  26,  1907.  When  Europeans 
carry  syphilis  to  lands  inhabited  by  people  of  lower  race,  the  results  are 
often  very  much  worse  than  this.  Thus  Lambkin,  as  a  result  of  a  spe- 
cial mission  to  investigate  syphilis  in  Uganda,  found  that  in  some 
districts  as  many  as  ninety  per  cent,  of  the  people  suffer  from  syphilis, 
and  fifty  to  sixty  per  cent,  of  the  infant  mortality  is  due  to  this  cause. 
These  people  are  Baganda,  a  highly  intelligent,  powerful,  and  well-organ- 
ized tribe  before  they  received,  in  the  gift  of  syphilis,  the  full  benefit  of 
civilization  and  Christianity,  which  (Lambkin  points  out)  has  been 
largely  the  cause  of  the  spread  of  the  disease  by  breaking  down  social 
customs  and  emancipating  the  women.  Christianity  is  powerful  enough 
to  break  down  the  old  morality,  hut  not  powerful  enough  to  build  up  a 
new  morality  (British  Medical  Journal,  October  3,  1908,  p.  1037). 

2  Even  within  the  limits  of  the  English  army  it  is  found  in  India 
(H.  C.  French.  Syphilis  in  the  Army,  1907)  that  venereal  disease  is  ten 
times  more  frequent  among  British  troops  than  among  Native  troops. 


328  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   SEX. 

national,  is  less  representative  of  the  people  than  is  the  case  in 
countries  where  some  form  of  conscription  prevails.  At  one 
London  hospital  it  could  be  ascertained  that  ten  per  cent,  of  the 
patients  had  had  syphilis ;  this  probably  means  a  real  proportion 
of  about  fifteen  per  cent.,  a  high  though  not  extremely  high  ratio. 
Yet  it  is  obvious  that  even  if  the  ratio  is  really  lower  than  this  the 
national  loss  in  life  and  health,  in  defective  procreation  and 
racial  deterioration,  must  be  enormous  and  practically  incal- 
culable. Even  in  cash  the  venereal  budget  is  comparable  in 
amount  to  the  general  budget  of  a  great  nation.  Stritch 
estimates  that  the  cost  to  the  British  nation  of  venereal  diseases 
in  the  army,  navy  and  Government  departments  alone,  amounts 
annually  to  £3,000,000,  and  when  allowance  is  made  for  super- 
annuations and  sick-leave  indirectly  occasioned  through  these 
diseases,  though  not  appearing  in  the  returns  as  such,  the  more 
accurate  estimate  of  the  cost  to  the  nation  is  stated  to  be  £7,000- 
000.  The  adoption  of  simple  hygienic  measures  for  the  preven- 
tion and  the  speedy  cure  of  venereal  diseases  will  be  not  only 
indirectly  but  even  directly  a  source  of  immense  wealth  to  the 
nation. 

Syphilis  is  the  most  obviously  and  conspicuously  appalling 
of  the  venereal  diseases.  Yet  it  is  less  frequent  and  in  some 
respects  less  dangerously  insidious  than  the  other  chief  venereal 
disease,  gonorrhoea.1  At  one  time  the  serious  nature  of 
gonorrhoea,  especially  in  women,  was  little  realized.  Men 
accepted  it  with  a  light  heart  as  a  trivial  accident;  women 
ignored  it.     This  failure  to  realize  the  gravity  of  gonorrhoea, 


Outside  of  national  armies  it  is  found,  by  admission  to  hospital  and 
death  rates,  that  the  United  States  stands  far  away  at  the  head  for  fre- 
quency of  venereal  disease,  being  followed  by  Great  Britain,  then  France 
and  Austria-Hungary,  Russia,  and  Germany. 

1  There  is  no  dispute  concerning  the  antiquity  of  gonorrhoea  in  the 
Old  World  as  there  is  regarding  syphilis.  The  disease  was  certainly 
known  at  a  very  remote  period.  Even  Esarhaddon,  the  famous  King  of 
Assyria,  referred  to  in  the  Old  Testament,  was  treated  by  the  priests  for 
a  disorder  which,  as  described  in  the  cuneiform  documents  of  the  time, 
could  only  have  been  gonorrhoea.  The  disease  was  also  well  known  to 
the  ancient  Egyptians,  and  evidently  common,  for  they  recorded  many 
prescriptions  for  its  treatment  (Oefele,  "Gonorrhoe  1350  vor  Christi 
Geburt,"  Monatshefte  fur  Praktische  Dermatologie,  1899,  p.  260). 


THE    CONQUEST    OE    THE    VENEREAL    DISEASES.  329 

even  sometimes  on  the  part  of  the  medical  profession — so  that  it 
has  been  popularly  looked  upon,  in  Grandmas  words,  as  of  little 
more  significance  than  a  cold  in  the  nose — has  led  to  a  reaction 
on  the  part  of  some  towards  an  opposite  extreme,  and  the  risks 
and  dangers  of  gonorrhoea  have  been  even  unduly  magnified. 
This  is  notably  the  case  as  regards  sterility.  The  inflammatory 
results  of  gonorrhoea  are  indubitably  a  potent  cause  of  sterility  in 
both  sexes ;  some  authorities  have  stated  that  not  only  eighty  per 
cent,  of  the  deaths  from  inflammatory  diseases  of  the  pelvic 
organs  and  the  majority  of  the  cases  of  chronic  invalidism  in 
women,  but  ninety  per  cent,  of  involuntary  sterile  marriages,  are 
due  to  gonorrhoea.  Neisser,  a  great  authority,  ascribes  to  this 
disease  without  doubt  fifty  per  cent,  of  such  marriages.  Even 
this  estimate  is  in  the  experience  of  some  observers  excessive.  It 
is  fully  proved  that  the  great  majority  of  men  who  have  had 
gonorrhoea,  even  if  they  marry  within  two  years  of  being  infected, 
fail  to  convey  the  disease  to  their  wives,  and  even  of  the  women 
infected  by  their  husbands  more  than  half  have  children.  This 
is,  for  instance,  the  result  of  Erb's  experience,  and  Kisch  speaks 
still  more  strongly  in  the  same  sense.  Bumm,  again,  although 
regarding  gonorrhoea  as  one  of  the  two  chief  causes  of  sterility 
in  women,  finds  that  it  is  not  the  most  frequent  cause,  being  only 
responsible  for  about  one-third  of  the  cases;  the  other  two- 
thirds  are  due  to  developmental  faults  in  the  genital  organs. 
Dunning  in  America  has  reached  results  which  are  fairly  con- 
cordant with  Bumm's. 

With  regard  to  another  of  the  terrible  results  of  gonorrhoea, 
the  part  it  plays  in  producing  life-long  blindness  from  infection 
of  the  eyes  at  birth,  there  has  long  been  no  sort  of  doubt.  The 
Committee  of  the  Ophthalmological  Society  in  1884,  reported 
that  thirty  to  forty-one  per  cent,  of  the  inmates  of  four  asylums 
for  the  blind  in  England  owed  their  blindness  to  this  cause.1  In 
German  asylums  Eeinhard  found  that  thirty  per  cent,  lost  their 
sight  from  the  same  cause.  The  total  number  of  persons  blind 
from   gonorrhceal    infection    from    their   mothers    at    birth    is 

1  Cf.  Memorandum  by  Sydney  Stephenson,  Report  of  Ophthalmia 
Neonatorum  Committee,  British  Medical  Journal,  May  8,  1909. 


330  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   SEX. 

enormous.  The  British  Eoyal  Commission  on  the  Condition  of 
the  Blind  estimated  there  were  about  seven  thousand  persons  in 
the  United  Kingdom  alone  (or  twenty-two  per  cent,  of  the  blind 
persons  in  the  country)  who  became  blind  as  the  result  of  this 
disease,  and  Mookerji  stated  in  his  address  on  Ophthalmalogy  at 
the  Indian  Medical  Congress  of  1894  that  in  Bengal  alone  there 
were  six  hundred  thousand  totally  blind  beggars,  forty  per  cent,  of 
whom  lost  their  sight  at  birth  through  maternal  gonorrhoea; 
and  this  refers  to  the  beggar  class  alone. 

Although  gonorrhoea  is  liable  to  produce  many  and  various 
calamities,1  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  majority  of  gonor- 
rheal persons  escape  either  suffering  or  inflicting  any  very 
serious  injury.  The  special  reason  why  gonorrhoea  has  become 
so  peculiarly  serious  a  scourge  is  its  extreme  prevalence.  It 
is  difficult  to  estimate  the  proportion  of  men  and  women  in 
the  general  population  who  have  had  gonorrhoea,  and  the  estimates 
vary  within  wide  limits.  They  are  often  set  too  high.  Erb,  of 
Heidelberg,  anxious  to  disprove  exaggerated  estimates  of  the 
prevalence  of  gonorrhoea,  went  over  the  records  of  two  thousand 
two  hundred  patients  in  his  private  practice  (excluding  all 
hospital  patients)  and  found  the  proportion  of  those  who  had 
suffered  from  gonorrhoea  was  48.5  per  cent. 

Among  the  working  classes  the  disease  is  much  less  prevalent 
than  among  higher-class  people.  In  a  Berlin  Industrial  Sick 
Club,  412  per  10,000  men  and  69  per  10,000  women  had  gonor- 
rhoea in  a  year ;  taking  a  series  of  years  the  Club  showed  a  steady 
increase  in  the  number  of  men,  and  decrease  in  the  number  of 
women,  with  venereal  infection;  this  seems  to  indicate  that  the 
laboring  classes  are  beginning  to  have  intercourse  more  with 
prostitutes  and  less  with  respectable  girls.2  In  America  Wood 
Euggles  has  given  (as  had  Noggerath  previously,  for  New  York), 
the  prevalence  of  gonorrhoea  among  adult  males  as  from  75  to  80 
per  cent. ;   Tenney  places  it  much  lower,  20  per  cent,  for  males 

i  The  extent  of  these  evils  is  set  forth,  e.g.,  in  a  comprehensive 
essay  by  Taylor,  American  Journal  Obstetrics,  January,  1908. 

2JSTeisser  brings  together  figures  bearing  on  the  prevalence  of 
gonorrhoea  in  Germany,  Senator  and  Kaminer,  Health  and  Disease  in 
Relation  to  Marriage,  vol.  ii,  pp.  486-492. 


THE    CONQUEST    OF    THE    VENEREAL    DISEASES.  331 

and  5  per  cent,  for  females.  In  England,  a  writer  in  the  Lancet, 
some  years  ago,1  found  as  the  result  of  experience  and  inquiries 
that  75  per  cent,  adult  males  have  had  gonorrhoea  once,  40  per 
cent,  twice,  15  per  cent,  three  or  more  times.  According  to  Dul- 
berg  about  twenty  per  cent,  of  new  cases  occur  in  married  men  of 
good  social  class,  the  disease  being  comparatively  rare  among 
married  men  of  the  working  class  in  England. 

Gonorrhoea  in  its  prevalence  is  thus  only  second  to  measles 
and  in  the  gravity  of  its  results  scarcely  second  to  tuberculosis. 
"And  yet,"  as  Grandin  remarks  in  comparing  gonorrhoea  to  tuber- 
culosis, "witness  the  activity  of  the  crusade  against  the  latter  and 
the  criminal  apathy  displayed  when  the  former  is  concerned."2 
The  public  must  learn  to  understand,  another  writer  remarks, 
that  "gonorrhoea  is  a  pest  that  concerns  its  highest  interests  and 
most  sacred  relations  as  much  as  do  smallpox,  cholera,  diphtheria, 
or  tuberculosis."3 

It  cannot  fairly  be  said  that  no  attempts  have  been  made  to 
beat  back  the  flood  of  venereal  disease.  On  the  contrary,  such 
attempts  have  been  made  from  the  first.  But  they  have  never 
been  effectual  ;4  they  have  never  been  modified  to  changed  condi- 

1  Lancet,  September  23,  1882.  As  regards  women,  Dr.  Frances 
Ivens  {British  Medical  Journal,  June  19,  1909)  has  found  at  Liverpool 
that  14  per  cent,  of  gynsecological  cases  revealed  the  presence  of  gonor- 
rhea. They  were  mostly  poor  respectable  married  women.  This  is 
probably  a  high  proportion,  as  Liverpool  is  a  busy  seaport,  but  it  is 
less  than  Sanger's  estimate  of  18  per  cent. 

2  E.  H.  Grandin,  Medical  Record,  May  26,  1906. 

3  B.  W.  Cushing,  "Sociological  Aspects  of  Gonorrhoea,"  Transactions 
American  Gynecological  Society,  vol.  xxii,  1897. 

4  It  is  only  in  very  small  communities  ruled  by  an  autocratic  power 
with  absolute  authority  to  control  conditions  and  to  examine  persons  of 
both  sexes  that  reglementation  becomes  in  any  degree  effectual.  This  is 
well  shown  by  Dr.  W.  E.  Harwood,  who  describes  the  system  he  organized 
in  the  mines  of  the  Minnesota  Iron  Company  {Journal  American  Med- 
ical Association,  December  22,  1906).  The  women  in  the  brothels  on 
the  company's  estate  were  of  the  lowest  class,  and  disease  was  very 
prevalent.  Careful  examination  of  the  women  was  established,  and  con- 
trol of  the  men,  who,  immediately  on  becoming  diseased,  were  bound  to 
declare  by  what  woman  they  had  been  infected.  The  woman  was 
responsible  for  the  medical  bill  of  the  man  she  infected,  and  even  for  his 
board,  if  incapacitated,  and  the  women  were  compelled  to  maintain  a 
fund  for  their  own  hospital  expenses  when  required.  In  this  way  ven- 
ereal disease,  though  not  entirely  uprooted,  was  very  greatly  diminished. 


332  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   SEX. 

tion;  at  the  present  day  they  are  hopelessly  unscientific  and 
entirely  opposed  alike  to  the  social  and  the  individual  demands 
of  modern  peoples.  At  the  various  conferences  on  this  question 
which  have  been  held  during  recent  years  the  only  generally 
accepted  conclusion  which  has  emerged  is  that  all  the  existing 
systems  of  interference  or  non-interference  with  prostitution  are 
unsatisfactory.1 

The  character  of  prostitution  has  changed  and  the  methods 
of  dealing  with  it  must  change.  Brothels,  and  the  systems  of 
official  regulation  which  grew  up  with  special  reference  to 
brothels,  are  alike  out  of  date ;  they  have  about  them  a  mediasval 
atmosphere,  an  antiquated  spirit,  which  now  render  them 
unattractive  and  suspected.  The  conspicuously  distinctive 
brothel  is  falling  into  disrepute ;  the  liveried  prostitute  absolutely 
under  municipal  control  can  scarcely  be  said  to  exist.  Prostitu- 
tion tends  to  become  more  diffused,  more  intimately  mingled  with 
social  life  generally,  less  easily  distinguished  as  a  definitely 
separable  part  of  life.  We  can  nowadays  only  influence  it  by 
methods  of  permeation  which  bear  upon  the  whole  of  our  social 
life. 

The  objection  to  the  regulation  of  prostitution  is  still  of  slow 
growth,  but  it  is  steadily  developing  everywhere,  and  may  be  traced 
equally  in  scientific  opinion  and  in  popular  feeling.  In  France  the 
municipalities  of  some  of  the  largest  cities  have  either  suppressed  the 
system  of  regulation  entirely  or  shown  their  disapproval  of  it,  while  an 
inquiry  among  several  hundred  medical  men  showed  that  less  than  one- 
third  were  in  favor  of  maintaining  regulation  (Die  Neue  Generation, 
June,  1909,  p.  244).     In  Germany,  where  there  is  in  some  respects  more 


1  A  clear  and  comprehensive  statement  of  the  present  position  of 
the  question  is  given  by  Iwan  Bloch,  Das  Sexualleoen  Unserer  Zeit,  Chs. 
XIII-XV.  How  ineffectual  the  system  of  police  regulation  is,  even  in 
Germany,  where  police  interference  is  tolerated  to  so  marked  a  degree, 
may  be  illustrated  by  the  case  of  Mannheim.  Here  the  regulation  of 
prostitution  is  very  severe  and  thorough,  yet  a  careful  inquiry  in  1905 
among  the  doctors  of  Mannheim  (ninety- two  of  whom  sent  in  detailed 
returns)  showed  that  of  six  hundred  cases  of  venereal  disease  in  men, 
nearly  half  had  been  contracted  from  prostitutes.  About  half  the  re- 
maining cases  (nearly  a  quarter  of  the  whole)  were  due  to  waitresses 
and  bar-maids;  then  followed  servant-girls  (Lion  and  Loeb,  in  Sexual- 
padagogik,  the  Proceedings  of  the  Third  German  Congress  for  Combating 
Venereal  Diseases,  1907,  p.  295). 


THE    CONQUEST    OF    THE    VENEREAL    DISEASES.  333 

patient  endurance  of  interference  with  the  liberty  of  the  individual  than 
in  France,  England,  or  America,  various  elaborate  systems  for  organ- 
izing prostitution  and  dealing  with  venereal  disease  continue  to  be 
maintained,  but  they  cannot  be  completely  carried  out,  and  it  is  gen- 
erally admitted  that  in  any  case  they  could  not  accomplish  the  objects 
sought.  Thus  in  Saxony  no  brothels  are  officially  tolerated,  though  as 
a  matter  of  fact  they  nevertheless  exist.  Here,  as  in  many  other  parts 
of  Germany,  most  minute  and  extensive  regulations  are  framed  for  the 
use  of  prostitutes.  Thus  at  Leipzig  they  must  not  sit  on  the  benches 
in  public  promenades,  nor  go  to  picture  galleries,  or  theatres,  or  con- 
certs, or  restaurants,  nor  look  out  of  their  windows,  nor  stare  about 
them  in  the  street,  nor  smile,  nor  wink,  etc.,  etc.  In  fact,  a  German 
prostitute  who  possesses  the  heroic  self-control  to  carry  out  conscien- 
tiously all  the  self-denying  ordinances  officially  decreed  for  her  guidance 
would  seem  to  be  entitled  to  a  Government  pension  for  life. 

Two  methods  of  dealing  with  prostitution  prevail  in  Germany.  In 
some  cities  public  houses  of  prostitution  are  tolerated  (though  not 
licensed)  ;  in  other  cities  prostitution  is  "free,"  though  "secret."  Ham- 
burg is  the  most  important  city  where  houses  of  prostitution  are 
tolerated  and  segregated.  But,  it  is  stated,  "everywhere,  by  far  the 
larger  proportion  of  the  prostitutes  belong  to  the  so-called  'secret'  class." 
In  Hamburg,  alone,  are  suspected  men,  when  accused  of  infecting  women, 
officially  examined;  men  of  every  social  class  must  obey  a  summons  of 
this  kind,  which  is  issued  secretly,  and  if  diseased,  they  are  bound  to  go 
under  treatment,  if  necessary  under  compulsory  treatment  in  the  city 
hospital,  until  no  longer  dangerous  to  the  community. 

In  Germany  it  is  only  when  a  woman  has  been  repeatedly  observed 
to  act  suspiciously  in  the  streets  that  she  is  quietly  warned;  if  the 
warning  is  disregarded  she  is  invited  to  give  her  name  and  address  to 
the  police,  and  interviewed.  It  is  not  until  these  methods  fail  that  she 
is  officially  inscribed  as  a  prostitute.  The  inscribed  women,  in  some 
cities  at  all  events,  contribute  to  a  sick  benefit  fund  which  pays  their 
expenses  when  in  hospital.  The  hesitation  of  the  police  to  inscribe  a 
woman  on  the  official  list  is  legitimate  and  inevitable,  for  no  other  course 
would  be  tolerated;  yet  the  majority  of  prostitutes  begin  their  careers 
very  young,  and  as  they  tend  to  become  infected  very  early  after  their 
careers  begin,  it  is  obvious  that  this  delay  contributes  to  render  the 
system  of  regulation  ineffective.  In  Berlin,  where  there  are  no  officially 
recognized  brothels,  there  are  some  six  thousand  inscribed  prostitutes, 
but  it  is  estimated  that  there  are  over  sixty  thousand  prostitutes  who 
are  not  inscribed.  (The  foregoing  facts  are  taken  from  a  series  of 
papers  describing  personal  investigations  in  Germany  made  by  Dr.  F. 
Bierhoff,  of  New  York,  "Police  Methods  for  the  Sanitary  Control  of 
Prostitution,"  New  York  Medical  Journal,  August,  1907.)     The  estima- 


334  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

tion  of  the  amount  of  clandestine  prostitution  can  indeed  never  be  much 
more  than  guesswork;  exactly  the  same  figure  of  sixty  thousand  is  com- 
monly brought  forward  as  the  probable  number  of  prostitutes  not  only 
in  Berlin,  but  also  in  London  and  in  New  York.  It  is  absolutely  impos- 
sible to  say  whether  it  is  under  or  over  the  real  number,  for  secret 
prostitution  is  quite  intangible.  Even  if  the  facts  were  miraculously 
revealed  there  would  still  remain  the  difficulty  of  deciding  what  is  and 
what  is  not  prostitution.  The  avowed  and  public  prostitute  is  linked 
by  various  gradations  on  the  one  side  to  the  respectable  girl  living  at 
home  who  seeks  some  little  relief  from  the  oppression  of  her  respectabil- 
ity, and  on  the  other  hand  to  the  married  woman  who  has  married  for 
the  sake  of  a  home.  In  any  case,  however,  it  is  very  certain  that  public 
prostitutes  living  entirely  on  the  earnings  of  prostitution  form  but  a 
small  proportion  of  the  vast  army  of  women  who  may  be  said,  in  a  wide 
sense  of  the  word,  to  be  prostitutes,  i.e.,  who  use  their  attractiveness  to 
obtain  from  men  not  love  alone,  but  money  or  goods. 

"The  struggle  against  syphilis  is  only  possible  if  we  agree  to 

regard  its  victims  as  unfortunate  and  not  as  guilty 

We  must  give  up  the  prejudice  which  has  led  to  the  creation  of 
the  term  'shameful  diseases/  and  which  commands  silence  con- 
cerning this  scourge  of  the  family  and  of  humanity."  In  these 
words  of  Duclaux,  the  distinguished  successor  of  Pasteur  at  the 
Pasteur  Institute,  in  his  noble  and  admirable  work  L'Hygiene 
Sociale,  we  have  indicated  to  us,  I  am  convinced,  the  only  road 
by  which  we  can  approach  the  rational  and  successful  treatment 
of  the  great  social  problem  of  venereal  disease. 

The  supreme  importance  of  this  key  to  the  solution  of  a  problem 
which  has  often  seemed  insoluble  is  to-day  beginning  to  become  recog- 
nized in  all  quarters,  and  in  every  country.  Thus  a  distinguished 
German  authority,  Professor  Finger  (Geschlecht  und  Gesellschaft,  Bd. 
i,  Heft  5)  declares  that  venereal  disease  must  not  be  regarded  as  the 
well-merited  punishment  for  a  debauched  life,  but  as  an  unhappy 
accident.  It  seems  to  be  in  France,  however,  that  this  truth  has  been 
proclaimed  with  most  courage  and  humanity,  and  not  alone  by  the 
followers  of  science  and  medicine,  but  by  many  who  might  well  be 
excused  from  interfering  with  so  difficult  and  ungrateful  a  task.  Thus 
the  brothers,  Paul  and  Victor  Margueritte,  who  occupy  a  brilliant  and 
honorable  place  in  contemporary  French  letters,  have  distinguished 
themselves  by  advocating  a  more  humane  attitude  towards  prostitutes, 
and  a  more  modern  method  of  dealing  with  the  question  of  venereal 


THE    CONQUEST    OF    THE    VENEREAL    DISEASES.  335 

disease.  "The  true  method  of  prevention  is  that  which  makes  it  clear 
to  all  that  syphilis  is  not  a  mysterious  and  terrible  thing,  the  penalty 
of  the  sin  of  the  flesh,  a  sort  of  shameful  evil  branded  by  Catholic  male- 
diction, but  an  ordinary  disease  which  may  be  treated  and  cured."  It 
may  be  remarked  that  the  aversion  to  acknowledge  venereal  disease  is 
at  least  as  marked  in  France  as  in  any  other  country;  "maladies 
honteuses"  is  a  consecrated  French  term,  just  as  "loathsome  disease" 
is  in  English;  "in  the  hospital,"  says  Landret,  "it  requires  much  trou- 
ble to  obtain  an  avowal  of  gonorrhoea,  and  we  may  esteem  ourselves 
happy  if  the  patient  acknowledges  the  fact  of  having  had  syphilis." 

No  evils  can  be  combated  until  they  are  recognized,  simply 
and  f rankty,  and  honestly  discussed.  It  is  a  significant  and  even 
symbolic  fact  that  the  bacteria  of  disease  rarely  flourish  when 
they  are  open  to  the  free  currents  of  pure  air.  Obscurity,  dis- 
guise, concealment  furnish  the  best  conditions  for  their  vigor  and 
diffusion,  and  these  favoring  conditions  we  have  for  centuries 
past  accorded  to  venereal  diseases.  It  was  not  always  so,  as 
indeed  the  survival  of  the  word  'venereal'  itself  in  this  connec- 
tion, with  its  reference  to  a  goddess,  alone  suffices  to  show.  Even 
the  name  "syphilis"  itself,  taken  from  a  romantic  poem  in  which 
Fracastorus  sought  a  mythological  origin  for  the  disease,  bears 
witness  to  the  same  fact.  The  romantic  attitude  is  indeed  as 
much  out  of  date  as  that  of  hypocritical  and  shamefaced  obscuran- 
tism. We  need  to  face  these  diseases  in  the  same  simple,  direct, 
and  courageous  way  which  has  already  been  adopted  successfully 
in  the  case  of  smallpox,  a  disease  which,  of  old,  men  thought 
analogous  to  syphilis  and  which  was  indeed  once  almost  as  terrible 
in  its  ravages. 

At  this  point,  however,  we  encounter  those  who  say  that  it  is 
unnecessary  to  show  any  sort  of  recognition  of  venereal  diseases, 
and  immoral  to  do  anything  that  might  seem  to  involve  indulg- 
ence to  those  who  suffer  from  such  diseases ;  they  have  got  what 
they  deserve  and  may  well  be  left  to  perish.  Those  who  take 
this  attitude  place  themselves  so  far  outside  the  pale  of  civiliza- 
tion— to  say  nothing  of  morality  or  religion — that  they  might 
well  be  disregarded.  The  progress  of  the  race,  the  development  of 
humanity,  in  fact  and  in  feeling,  has  consisted  in  the  elimination 
of  an  attitude  which  it  is  an  insult  to  primitive  peoples  to  term 


336  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   SEX. 

savage.  Yet  it  is  an  attitude  which  should  not  be  ignored  for  it 
still  carries  weight  with  many  who  are  too  weak  to  withstand 
those  who  juggle  with  fine  moral  phrases.  I  have  even  seen  in  a 
medical  quarter  the  statement  that  venereal  disease  cannot  be 
put  on  the  same  level  with  other  infectious  diseases  because  it  is 
"the  result  of  voluntary  action."  But  all  the  diseases,  indeed  all 
the  accidents  and  misfortunes  of  suffering  human  beings,  are 
equally  the  involuntary  results  of  voluntary  actions.  The  man 
who  is  run  over  in  crossing  the  street,  the  family  poisoned  by 
unwholesome  food,  the  mother  who  catches  the  disease  of  the 
child  she  is  nursing,  all  these  suffer  as  the  involuntary  result  of 
the  voluntary  act  of  gratifying  some  fundamental  human 
instinct — the  instinct  of  activity,  the  instinct  of  nutrition,  the 
instinct  of  affection.  The  instinct  of  sex  is  as  fundamental  as 
any  of  these,  and  the  involuntary  evils  which  may  follow  the 
voluntary  act  of  gratifying  it  stand  on  exactly  the  same  level. 
This  is  the  essential  fact :  a  human  being  in  following  the 
human  instincts  implanted  within  him  has  stumbled  and  fallen. 
Any  person  who  sees,  not  this  essential  fact  but  merely  some 
subsidiary  aspect  of  it,  reveals  a  mind  that  is  twisted  and 
perverted;  he  has  no  claim  to  arrest  our  attention. 

But  even  if  we  were  to  adopt  the  standpoint  of  the  would-be 
moralist,  and  to  agree  that  everyone  must  be  left  to  suffer  his 
deserts,  it  is  far  indeed  from  being  the  fact  that  all  those  who 
contract  venereal  diseases  are  in  any  sense  receiving  their  deserts. 
In  a  large  number  of  cases  the  disease  has  been  inflicted  on  them 
in  the  most  absolutely  involuntary  manner.  This  is,  of  course, 
true  in  the  case  of  the  vast  number  of  infants  who  are  infected 
at  conception  or  at  birth.  But  it  is  also  true  in  a  scarcely  less 
absolute  manner  of  a  large  proportion  of  persons  infected  in 
later  life. 

Syphilis  insontium,  or  syphilis  of  the  innocent,  as  it  is  com- 
monly called,  may  be  said  to  fall  into  five  groups :  (1)  the  vast 
army  of  congenitally  syphilitic  infants  who  inherit  the  disease 
from  father  or  mother;  (2)  the  constantly  occurring  cases  of 
syphilis  contracted,  in  the  course  of  their  professional  duties,  by 
doctors,  midwives  and  wet-nurses;    (3)  infection  as  a  result  of 


THE    CONQUEST    OF    THE    VENEREAL    DISEASES.  337 

affection,  as  in  simple  kissing;  (4)  accidental  infection  from 
casual  contacts  and  from  using  in  common  the  objects  and 
utensils  of  daily  life,  such  as  cups,  towels,  razors,  knives  (as  in 
ritual  circumcision),  etc;  (5)  the  infection  of  wives  by  their 
husbands.1 

Hereditary  congenital  syphilis  belongs  to  the  ordinary  path- 
ology of  the  disease  and  is  a  chief  element  in  its  social  danger 
since  it  is  responsible  for  an  enormous  infantile  mortality.2  The 
risks  of  extragenital  infection  in  the  professional  activity  of 
doctors,  midwives  and  wet-nurses  is  also  universally  recognized. 
In  the  case  of  wet-nurses  infected  by  their  employers'  syphilitic 
infants  at  their  breast,  the  penalty  inflicted  on  the  innocent  is 
peculiarly  harsh  and  unnecessary.  The  influence  of  infected  low- 
class  midwives  is  notably  dangerous,  for  they  may  inflict  wide- 
spread injury  in  ignorance ;  thus  the  case  has  been  recorded  of  a 
midwife,  whose  finger  became  infected  in  the  course  of  her 
duties,  and  directly  or  indirectly  contaminated  one  hundred  per- 
sons. Kissing  is  an  extremely  common  source  of  syphilitic 
infection,  and  of  all  extragenital  regions  the  mouth  is  by  far  the 
most  frequent  seat  of  primary  syphilitic  sores.  In  some  cases,  it 
is  true,  especially  in  prostitutes,  this  is  the  result  of  abnormal 
sexual  contacts.  But  in  the  majority  of  cases  it  is  the  result  of 
ordinary  and  slight  kisses  as  between  young  children,  between 
parents  and  children,  between  lovers  and  friends  and  acquaint- 


1  A  sixth  less  numerous  class  might  be  added  of  the  young  girls, 
often  no  more  than  children,  who  have  been  practically  raped  by 
men  who  believe  that  intercourse  with  a  virgin  is  a  cure  for  obstinate 
venereal  disease.  In  America  this  belief  is  frequently  held  by  Italians, 
Chinese,  negroes,  etc.  W.  Travis  Gibb,  Examining  Physician  of  the 
New  York  Society  for  the  Prevention  of  Cruelty  to  Children,  has  ex- 
amined over  900  raped  children  (only  a  small  proportion,  he  states,  of 
the  cases  actually  occurring),  and  finds  that  thirteen  per  cent,  have 
venereal  diseases.  A  fairly  large  proportion  of  these  cases,  among  girls 
from  twelve  to  sixteen,  are,  he  states,  willing  victims.  Dr.  Flora  Pol- 
lack, also,  of  the  Johns  Hopkins  Hospital  Dispensary,  estimates  that 
in  Baltimore  alone  from  800  to  1,000  children  between  the  ages  of  one 
and  fifteen  are  venereally  infected  every  year.  The  largest  number,  she 
finds,  is  at  the  age  of  six,  and  the  chief  cause  appears  to  be,  not  lust, 
but  superstition. 

2  For  a  discussion  of  inherited  syphilis,  see,  e.g.,  Clement  Lucas, 
Lancet,  February  1,  1908. 

22 


S38  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   SEX. 

ances.  Fairly  typical  examples,  which  have  been  reported,  are 
those  of  a  child,  kissed  by  a  prostitute,  who  became  infected  and 
subsequently  infected  its  mother  and  grandmother;  of  a  young 
French  bride  contaminated  on  her  wedding-day  by  one  of  the 
guests  who,  according  to  French  custom,  kissed  her  on  the  cheek 
after  the  ceremony ;  of  an  American  girl  who,  returning  from  a 
ball,  kissed,  at  parting,  the  young  man  who  had  accompanied  her 
home,  thus  acquiring  the  disease  which  she  not  long  afterwards 
imparted  in  the  same  way  to  her  mother  and  three  sisters.  The 
ignorant  and  unthinking  are  apt  to  ridicule  those  who  point  out 
the  serious  risks  of  miscellaneous  kissing.  But  it  remains  never- 
theless true  that  people  who  are  not  intimate  enough  to  know 
the  state  of  each  other's  health  are  not  intimate  enough  to  kiss 
each  other.  Infection  by  the  use  of  domestic  utensils,  linen,  etc., 
while  comparatively  rare  among  the  better  social  classes,  is 
extremely  common  among  the  lower  classes  and  among  the  less 
civilized  nations;  in  Eussia,  according  to  Tarnowsky,  the  chief 
authority,  seventy  per  cent,  of  all  cases  of  syphilis  in  the  rural 
districts  are  due  to  this  cause  and  to  ordinary  kissing,  and  a 
special  conference  in  St.  Petersburg  in  1897,  for  the  considera- 
tion of  the  methods  of  dealing  with  venereal  disease,  recorded  its 
opinion  to  the  same  effect;  much  the  same  seems  to  be  true 
regarding  Bosnia  and  various  parts  of  the  Balkan  peninsula 
where  syphilis  is  extremely  prevalent  among  the  peasantry.  As 
regards  the  last  group,  according  to  Bulkley  in  America,  fifty  per 
cent,  of  women  generally  contract  syphilis  innocently,  chiefly 
from  their  husbands,  while  Fournier  states  that  in  France 
seventy-five  per  cent,  of  married  women  with  syphilis  have  been 
infected  by  their  husbands,  most  frequently  (seventy  per  cent.) 
by  husbands  who  were  themselves  infected  before  marriage  and 
supposed  that  they  were  cured.  Among  men  the  proportion  of 
syphilitics  who  have  been  accidentally  infected,  though  less  than 
among  women,  is  still  very  considerable;  it  is  stated  to  be  at 
least  ten  per  cent.,  and  possibly  it  is  a  much  larger  proportion  of 
cases.  The  scrupulous  moralist  who  is  anxious  that  all  should 
have  their  deserts  cannot  fail  to  be  still  more  anxious  to  prevent 
the  innocent  from  suffering  in  place  of  the  guilty.    But  it  is 


THE    CONQUEST    OF    THE    VENEREAL    DISEASES.  339 

absolutely  impossible  for  him  to  combine  these  two  aims; 
syphilis  cannot  be  at  the  same  time  perpetuated  for  the  guilty 
and  abolished  for  the  innocent. 

I  have  been  taking  only  syphilis  into  account,  but  nearly  all  that 
is  said  of  the  accidental  infection  of  syphilis  applies  with  equal  or 
greater  force  to  gonorrhoea,  for  though  gonorrhoea  does  not  enter  into 
the  system  by  so  many  channels  as  syphilis,  it  is  a  more  common  as  well 
as  a  more  subtle  and  elusive  disease. 

The  literature  of  Syphilis  Insontium  is  extremely  extensive.  There 
is  a  bibliography  at  the  end  of  Duncan  Bulkley's  Syphilis  in  the 
Innocent,  and  a  comprehensive  summary  of  the  question  in  a  Leipzig 
Inaugural  Dissertation  by  F.  Moses,  Zur  Easuistik  der  Extragenitalen 
Syphilis-infektion,  1904. 

Even,  however,  when  we  have  put  aside  the  vast  number  of 
venereally  infected  people  who  may  be  said  to  be,  in  the  narrowest 
and  most  conventionally  moral  sense,  "innocent"  victims  of  the 
diseases  they  have  contracted,  there  is  still  much  to  be  said  on 
this  question.  It  must  be  remembered  that  the  majority  of  those 
who  contract  venereal  diseases  by  illegitimate  sexual  intercourse 
are  young.  They  are  youths,  ignorant  of  life,  scarcely  yet 
escaped  from  home,  still  undeveloped,  incompletely  educated,  and 
easily  duped  by  women;  in  many  cases  they  have  met,  as  they 
thought,  a  ''nice"  girl,  not  indeed  strictly  virtuous  but,  it  seemed 
to  them,  above  all  suspicion  of  disease,  though  in  reality  she  was 
a  clandestine  prostitute.  Or  they  are  young  girls  who  have 
indeed  ceased  to  be  absolutely  chaste,  but  have  not  yet  lost  all 
their  innocence,  and  who  do  not  consider  themselves,  and  are  not 
by  others  considered,  prostitutes;  that  indeed,  is  one  of  the 
rocks  on  which  the  system  of  police  regulation  of  prostitution 
comes  to  grief,  for  the  police  cannot  catch  the  prostitute  at  a 
sufficiently  early  stage.  Of  women  who  become  syphilitic,  accord- 
ing to  Fournier,  twenty  per  cent,  are  infected  before  they  are 
nineteen ;  in  hospitals  the  proportion  is  as  high  as  forty  per  cent. ; 
and  of  men  fifteen  per  cent,  cases  occur  between  eleven  and 
twenty-one  years  of  age.  The  age  of  maximum  frequency  of 
infection  is  for  women  twenty  years  (in  the  rural  population 
eighteen),  and  for  men  twenty-three  years.    In  Germany  Erb 


340  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

finds  that  as  many  as  eighty-five  per  cent  men  with  gonorrhoea 
contracted  the  disease  between  the  ages  of  sixteen  and  twenty- 
five,  a  very  small  percentage  being  infected  after  thirty.  These 
young  things  for  the  most  part  fell  into  a  trap  which  Nature  had 
baited  with  her  most  fascinating  lure;  they  were  usually 
ignorant;  not  seldom  they  were  deceived  by  an  attractive  per- 
sonality; often  they  were  overcome  by  passion;  frequently  all 
prudence  and  reserve  had  been  lost  in  the  fumes  of  wine.  From 
a  truly  moral  point  of  view  they  were  scarcely  less  innocent  than 
children. 

"I  ask,"  says  Duelaux,  "whether  when  a  young  man,  or  a  young 
girl,  abandon  themselves  to  a  dangerous  caress  society  has  done  what  it 
can  to  warn  them.  Perhaps  its  intentions  were  good,  but  when  the  need 
came  for  precise  knowledge  a  silly  prudery  has  held  it  back,  and  it  has 
left  its  children  without  viaticum.  ...  I  will  go  further,  and  pro- 
claim that  in  a  large  number  of  cases  the  husbands  who  contaminate 
their  wives  are  innocent.  No  one  is  responsible  for  the  evil  which  he 
commits  without  knowing  it  and  without  willing  it."  I  may  recall  the 
suggestive  fact,  already  referred  to,  that  the  majority  of  husbands  who 
infect  their  wives  contracted  the  disease  before  marriage.  They  entered 
on  marriage  believing  that  their  disease  was  cured,  and  that  they  had 
broken  with  their  past.  Doctors  have  sometimes  (and  quacks  fre- 
quently) contributed  to  this  result  by  too  sanguine  an  estimate  of  the 
period  necessary  to  destroy  the  poison.  So  great  an  authority  as 
Fournier  formerly  believed  that  the  syphilitic  could  safely  be  allowed 
to  marry  three  or  four  years  after  the  date  o'f  infection,  but  now,  with 
increased  experience,  he  extends  the  period  to  four  or  five  years.  It  is 
undoubtedly  true  that,  especially  when  treatment  has  been  thorough  and 
prompt,  the  diseased  constitution,  in  a  majority  of  cases,  can  be  brought 
under  complete  control  in  a  shorter  period  than  this,  but  there  is  always 
a  certain  proportion  of  cases  in  which  the  powers  of  infection  persist 
for  many  years,  and  even  when  the  syphilitic  husband  is  no  longer 
capable  of  infecting  his  wife  he  may  still  perhaps  be  in  a  condition  to 
effect  a  disastrous  influence  on  the  offspring. 

In  nearly  all  these  cases  there  was  more  or  less  ignorance — 
which  is  but  another  word  for  innocence  as  we  commonly  under- 
stand innocence — and  when  at  last,  after  the  event,  the  facts  are 
more  or  less  bluntly  explained  to  the  victim  he  frequently  ex- 
claims :  "Nobody  told  me !"    It  is  this  fact  which  condemns  the 


THE    CONQUEST    OF    THE    VENEREAL    DISEASES.  341 

pseudo-moralist.  If  he  had  seen  to  it  that  mothers  began  to 
explain  the  facts  of  sex  to  their  little  boys  and  girls  from  child- 
hood, if  he  had  (as  Dr.  Joseph  Price  urges)  taught  the  risks  of 
venereal  disease  in  the  Sunday-school,  if  he  had  plainly  preached 
on  the  relations  of  the  sexes  from  the  pulpit,  if  he  had  seen  to  it 
that  every  youth  at  the  beginning  of  adolescence  received  some 
simple  technical  instruction  from  his  family  doctor  concerning 
sexual  health  and  sexual  disease — then,  though  there  would  still 
remain  the  need  of  pity  for  those  who  strayed  from  a  path  that 
must  always  be  difficult  to  walk  in,  the  would-be  moralist  at  all 
events  would  in  some  measure  be  exculpated.  But  he  has  seldom 
indeed  lifted  a  finger  to  do  any  of  these  things. 

Even  those  who  may  be  unwilling  to  abandon  an  attitude  of 
private  moral  intolerance  towards  the  victims  of  venereal  diseases 
may  still  do  well  to  remember  that  since  the  public  manifestation 
of  their  intolerance  is  mischievous,  and  at  the  best  useless,  it  is 
necessary  for  them  to  restrain  it  in  the  interests  of  society.  They 
would  not  be  the  less  free  to  order  their  own  personal  conduct  in 
the  strictest  accordance  with  their  superior  moral  rigidity;  and 
that  after  all  is  for  them  the  main  thing.  But  for  the  sake  of 
society  it  is  necessary  for  them  to  adopt  what  they  may  consider 
the  convention  of  a  purely  hygienic  attitude  towards  these  dis- 
eases. The  erring  are  inevitably  frightened  by  an  attitude  of 
moral  reprobation  into  methods  of  concealment,  and  these  produce 
an  endless  chain  of  social  evils  which  can  only  be  dissipated  by 
openness.  As  Duclaux  has  so  earnestly  insisted,  it  is  impossible 
to  grapple  successfully  with  venereal  disease  unless  we  consent 
not  to  introduce  our  prejudices,  or  even  our  morals  and  religion, 
into  the  question,  but  treat  it  purely  and  simply  as  a  sanitary 
question.  And  if  the  pseudo-moralist  still  has  difficulty  in  co- 
operating towards  the  healing  of  this  social  sore  he  may  be 
reminded  that  he  himself — like  every  one  of  us  little  though  we 
may  know  it — has  certainly  had  a  great  army  of  syphilitic  and 
gonorrhceal  persons  among  his  own  ancestors  during  the  past  four 
centuries.  We  are  all  bound  together,  and  it  is  absurd,  even  when 
it  is  not  inhuman,  to  cast  contempt  on  our  own  flesh  and  blood. 

I  have  discussed  rather  fully  the  attitude  of  those  who  plead 


342  PSYCHOLOGY  OF   SEX. 

morality  as  a  reason  for  ignoring  the  social  necessity  of  combating 
venereal  disease,  because  although  there  may  not  be  many  who 
seriously  and  understandingly  adopt  so  anti-social  and  inhuman 
an  attitude  there  are  certainly  many  who  are  glad  at  need  of  the 
existence  of  so  fine  an  excuse  for  their  moral  indifference  or  their 
mental  indolence.1  When  they  are  confronted  by  this  great  and 
difficult  problem  they  find  it  easy  to  offer  the  remedy  of  conven- 
tional morality,  although  they  are  well  aware  that  on  a  large 
scale  that  remedy  has  long  been  proved  to  be  ineffectual.  They 
ostentatiously  affect  to  proffer  the  useless  thick  end  of  the  wedge 
at  a  point  where  it  is  only  possible  with  much  skill  and  prudence 
to  insinuate  the  thin  working  end. 

The  general  acceptance  of  the  fact  that  syphilis  and  gonor- 
rhoea are  diseases,  and  not  necessarily  crimes  or  sins,  is  the  con- 
dition for  any  practical  attempt  to  deal  with  this  question  from 
the  sanitary  point  of  view  which  is  now  taking  the  place  of  the 
antiquated  and  ineffective  police  point  of  view.  The  Scandi- 
navian countries  of  Europe  have  been  the  pioneers  in  practical 
modern  hygienic  methods  of  dealing  with  venereal  disease. 
There  are  several  reasons  why  this  has  come  about.  All  the 
problems  of  sex — of  sexual  love  as  well  as  of  sexual  disease — 
have  long  been  prominent  in  these  countries,  and  an  impatience 
with  prudish  hypocrisy  seems  here  to  have  been  more  pronounced 
than  elsewhere;  we  see  this  spirit,  for  instance,  emphatically 
embodied  in  the  plays  of  Ibsen,  and  to  some  extent  in  Bjornson's 
works.  The  fearless  and  energetic  temper  of  the  people  impels 
them  to  deal  practically  with  sexual  difficulties,  while  their  strong 
instincts  of  independence  render  them  averse  to  the  bureaucratic 
police  methods  which  have  flourished  in  Germany  and  France. 
The  Scandinavians  have  thus  been  the  natural  pioneers  of  the 
methods  of  combating  venereal  diseases  which  are  now  becoming 


1  Much  harm  has  been  done  in  some  countries  by  the  foolish  and 
mischievous  practice  of  friendly  societies  and  sick  clubs  of  ignoring 
venereal  diseases,  and  not  according  free  medical  aid  or  sick  pay  to 
those  members  who  suffer  from  them.  This  practice  prevailed,  for 
instance,  in  Vienna  until  1907,  when  a  more  humane  and  enlightened 
policy  was  inaugurated,  venereal  diseases  being  placed  on  the  same  level 
as  other  diseases. 


THE    CONQUEST    OF    THE    VENEREAL    DISEASES.  343 

generally  recognized  to  be  the  methods  of  the  future,  and  they 
have  fully  organized  the  system  of  putting  venereal  diseases  under 
the  ordinary  law  and  dealing  with  them  as  with  other  contagious 
diseases. 

The  first  step  in  dealing  with  a  contagious  disease  is  to  apply 
to  it  the  recognized  principles  of  notification.  Every  new  appli- 
cation of  the  principle,  it  is  true,  meets  with  opposition.  It  is 
without  practical  result,  it  is  an  unwarranted  inquisition  into  the 
affairs  of  the  individual,  it  is  a  new  tax  on  the  busy  medical 
practitioner,  etc.  Certainly  notification  by  itself  will  not  arrest 
the  progress  of  any  infectious  disease.  But  it  is  an  essential 
element  in  every  attempt  to  deal  with  the  prevention  of  disease. 
Unless  we  know  precisely  the  exact  incidence,  local  variations,  and 
temporary  fluctuations  of  a  disease  we  are  entirely  in  the  dark 
and  can  only  beat  about  at  random.  All  progress  in  public 
hygiene  has  been  accompanied  by  the  increased  notification  of 
disease,  and  most  authorities  are  agreed  that  such  notification 
must  be  still  further  extended,  any  slight  inconvenience  thus 
caused  to  individuals  being  of  trifling  importance  compared  to 
the  great  public  interests  at  stake.  It  is  true  that  so  great  an 
authority  as  Neisser  has  expressed  doubt  concerning  the  extension 
of  notification  to  gonorrhoea;  the  diagnosis  cannot  be  infallible, 
and  the  patients  often  give  false  names.  These  objections,  how- 
ever, seem  trivial;  diagnosis  can  very  seldom  be  infallible  (though 
in  this  field  no  one  has  done  so  much  for  exact  diagnosis  as 
Neisser  himself),  and  names  are  not  necessary  for  notification, 
and  are  not  indeed  required  in  the  form  of  compulsory  notification 
of  venereal  disease  which  existed  a  few  years  ago  in  Norway. 

The  principle  of  the  compulsory  notification  of  venereal 
diseases  seems  to  have  been  first  established  in  Prussia,  where  it 
dates  from  1835.  The  system  here,  however,  is  only  partial,  not 
being  obligatory  in  all  cases  but  only  when  in  the  doctor's 
opinion  secrecy  might  be  harmful  to  the  patient  himself  or  to  the 
community;  it  is  only  obligatory  when  the  patient  is  a  soldier. 
This  method  of  notification  is  indeed  on  a  wrong  basis,  it  is  not 
part  of  a  comprehensive  sanitary  system  but  merely  an  auxiliary 
to  police  methods  of  dealing  with  prostitution.     According  to  the 


344  PSYCHOLOGY   OF    SEX. 

Scandinavian  system,  notification,  though  not  an  essential  part  of 
this  system,  rests  on  an  entirely  different  basis. 

The  Scandinavian  plan  in  a  modified  form  has  lately  been 
established  in  Denmark.  This  little  country,  so  closely  adjoining 
Germany,  for  some  time  followed  in  this  matter  the  example  of 
its  great  neighbor  and  adopted  the  police  regulation  of  prostitu- 
tion and  venereal  disease.  The  more  fundamental  Scandinavian 
affinities  of  Denmark  were,  however,  eventually  asserted,  and  in 
1906,  the  system  of  regulation  was  entirely  abandoned  and  Den- 
mark resolved  to  rely  on  thorough  and  systematic  application 
of  the  sanitary  principle  already  accepted  in  the  country,  although 
something  of  German  influence  still  persists  in  the  strict 
regulation  of  the  streets  and  the  penalties  imposed  upon 
brothel-keepers,  leaving  prostitution  itself  free.  The  decisive 
feature  of  the  present  system  is,  however,  that  the  sanitary 
authorities  are  now  exclusively  medical.  Everyone,  whatever 
his  social  or  financial  position,  is  entitled  to  the  free  treatment  of 
venereal  disease.  Whether  he  avails  himself  of  it  or  not,  he  is  in 
any  case  bound  to  undergo  treatment.  Every  diseased  person  is 
thus,  so  far  as  it  can  be  achieved,  in  a  doctor's  hands.  All 
doctors  have  their  instructions  in  regard  to  such  cases,  they  have 
not  only  to  inform  their  patients  that  they  cannot  marry  so  long 
as  risks  of  infection  are  estimated  to  be  present,  but  that  they 
are  liable  for  the  expenses  of  treatment,  as  well  as  the  dangers 
suffered,  by  any  persons  whom  they  may  infect.  Although  it 
has  not  been  possible  to  make  the  system  at  every  point  thor- 
oughly operative,  its  general  success  is  indicated  by  the  entire 
reliance  now  placed  on  it,  and  the  abandonment  of  the  police 
regulation  of  prostitution.  A  system  very  similar  to  that  of 
Denmark  was  established  some  years  previously  in  Norway.  The 
principle  of  the  treatment  of  venereal  disease  at  the  public  ex- 
pense exists  also  in  Sweden  as  well  as  in  Finland,  where  treatment 
is  compulsory.1 

1  Active  measures  against  venereal  disease  were  introduced  in 
Sweden  early  in  the  last  century,  and  compulsory  and  gratuitous  treat- 
ment established.  Compulsory  notification  was  introduced  many  years 
ago  in  Norway,  and  by  1907  there  was  a  great  diminution  in  the 
prevalence  of  venereal  diseases;    there  is  compulsory  treatment. 


THE    CONQUEST    OF    THE    VENEREAL    DISEASES.  345 

It  can  scarcely  be  said  that  the  principle  of  notification  has 
yet  been  properly  applied  on  a  large  scale  to  venereal  diseases. 
But  it  is  constantly  becoming  more  widely  advocated,  more 
especially  in  England  and  the  United  States,1  where  national 
temperament  and  political  traditions  render  the  system  of  the 
police  regulation  of  prostitution  impossible — even  if  it  were  more> 
effective  than  it  practically  is — and  where  the  system  of  dealing 
with  venereal  disease  on  the  basis  of  public  health  has  to  be 
recognized  as  not  only  the  best  but  the  only  possible  system.2 

In  association  with  this,  it  is  necessary,  as  is  also  becoming 
ever  more  widely  recognized,  that  there  should  be  the  most  ample 
facilities  for  the  gratuitous  treatment  of  venereal  diseases;  the 
general  establishment  of  free  dispensaries,  open  in  the  evenings,  is 
especially  necessary,  for  many  can  only  seek  advice  and  help  at 
this  time.  It  is  largely  to  the  systematic  introduction  of  facilities 
for  gratuitous  treatment  that  the  enormous  reduction  in  venereal 
disease  in  Sweden,  Norway,  and  Bosnia  is  attributed.  It  is  the 
absence  of  the  facilities  for  treatment,  the  implied  feeling  that  the 
victims  of  venereal  disease  are  not  sufferers  but  merely  offenders 
not  entitled  to  care,  that  has  in  the  past  operated  so  disastrously 
in  artificially  promoting  the  dissemination  of  preventable  diseases 
which  might  be  brought  under  control. 

If  we  dispense  with  the  paternal  methods  of  police  regula- 
tion, if  we  rely  on  the  general  principles  of  medical  hygiene,  and 
for  the  rest  allow  the  responsibility  for  his  own  good  or  bad 
actions  to  rest  on  the  individual  himself,  there  is  a  further  step, 
already  fully  recognized  in  principle,  which  we  cannot  neglect  to 
take:  We  must  look  on  every  person  as  accountable  for  the 
venereal  diseases  he  transmits.  So  long  as  we  refuse  to  recognize 
venereal  diseases  as  on  the  same  level  as  other  infectious  diseases, 
and  so  long  as  we  offer  no  full  and  fair  facilities  for  their  treat- 


1  See,  e.g.,  Morrow,  Social  Diseases  and  Marriage,  Ch.  XXXVII. 

2  A  cornraittee  of  the  Medical  Society  of  New  York,  appointed  in 
1902  to  consider  this  question,  reported  in  favor  of  notification  without 
giving  names  and  addresses,  and  Dr.  C.  R.  Drysdale,  who  took  an  active 
part  in  the  Brussels  International  Conference  of  1899,  advocated  a 
similar  plan  in  England,  British  Medical  Journal,  February  3,  1900. 


346  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

ment,  it  is  unjust  to  bring  the  individual  to  account  for  spreading 
them.  But  if  we  publicly  recognize  the  danger  of  infectious 
venereal  diseases,  and  if  we  leave  freedom  to  the  individual,  we 
must  inevitably  declare,  with  Duclaux,  that  every  man  or  woman 
must  be  held  responsible  for  the  diseases  he  or  she  communicates. 

According  to  the  Oldenburg  Code  of  1814  it  was  a  punish- 
able offence  for  a  venereally  diseased  person  to  have  sexual  inter- 
course with  a  healthy  person,  whether  or  not  infection  resulted. 
In  Germany  to-day,  however,  there  is  no  law  of  this  kind, 
although  eminent  German  legal  authorities,  notably  Von  Liszt, 
are  of  opinion  that  a  paragraph  should  be  added  to  the  Code 
declaring  that  sexual  intercourse  on  the  part  of  a  person  who 
knows  that  he  is  diseased  should  be  punishable  by  imprisonment 
for  a  period  not  exceeding  two  years,  the  law  not  to  be  applied  as 
between  married  couples  except  on  the  application  of  one  of  the 
parties.  At  the  present  time  in  Germany  the  transmission  of 
venereal  disease  is  only  punishable  as  a  special  case  of  the 
infliction  of  bodily  injury.1  In  this  matter  Germany  is  behind 
most  of  the  Scandinavian  countries  where  individual  respon- 
sibility for  venereal  infection  is  well  recognized  and  actively 
enforced. 

In  France,  though  the  law  is  not  definite  and  satisfactory, 
actions  for  the  transmission  of  syphilis  are  successfully  brought 
before  the  courts.  Opinion  seems  to  be  more  decisively  in  favor 
of  punishment  for  this  offense  than  it  is  in  Germany.  In  1883 
Despres  discussed  the  matter  and  considered  the  objections.  Few 
may  avail  themselves  of  the  law,  he  remarks,  but  all  would  be 
rendered  more  cautious  by  the  fear  of  infringing  it;  while  the 
difficulties  of  tracing  and  proving  infection  are  not  greater,  he 
points  out,  than  those  of  tracing  and  proving  paternity  in  the 
case  of  illegitimate  children.  Despres  would  punish  with  im- 
prisonment for  not  more  than  two  3^ears  any  person,  knowing  him- 
self to  be  diseased,  who  transmitted  a  venereal  disease,  and  would 


i  Thus  in  Munich,  in  1908,  a  man  who  had  given  gonorrhoea  to  a 
servant-girl  was  sent  to  prison  for  ten  months  on  this  ground.  The 
state  of  German  opinion  to-day  ou  this  subject  is  summarized  by  Bloch, 
Sexualleben  unserer  Zeit,  p.  424. 


THE    CONQUEST    OF    THE    VENEREAL    DISEASES.  347 

merely  fine  those  who  communicated  the  contagion  by  impru- 
dence, not  realizing  that  they  were  diseased.1  The  question  has 
more  recently  been  discussed  by  Aurientis  in  a  Paris  thesis.  He 
states  that  the  present  French  law  as  regards  the  transmission  of 
sexual  diseases  is  not  clearly  established  and  is  difficult  to  act 
upon,  but  it  is  certainly  just  that  those  who  have  been  con- 
taminated and  injured  in  this  way  should  easily  be  able  to  obtain 
reparation.  Although  it  is  admitted  in  principle  that  the  com- 
munication of  syphilis  is  an  offence  even  under  common  law  he  is 
in  agreement  with  those  who  would  treat  it  as  a  special  offence, 
making  a  new  and  more  practical  law.2  Heavy  damages  are  even 
at  the  present  time  obtained  in  the  French  courts  from  men  who 
have  infected  young  women  in  sexual  intercourse,  and  also  from 
the  doctors  as  well  as  the  mothers  of  syphilitic  infants  who  have 
infected  the  foster-mothers  they  were  entrusted  to.  Although 
the  French  Penal  Code  forbids  in  general  the  disclosure  of  pro- 
fessional secrets,  it  is  the  duty  of  the  medical  practitioner  to 
warn  the  foster-mother  in  such  a  case  of  the  danger  she  is  incur- 
ring, but  without  naming  the  disease ;  if  he  neglects  to  give  this 
warning  he  may  be  held  liable. 

In  England,  as  well  as  in  the  United  States,  the  law  is  more 
unsatisfactory  and  more  helpless,  in  relation  to  this  class  of 
offences,  than  it  is  in  France.  The  mischievous  and  barbarous 
notion,  already  dealt  with,  according  to  which  venereal  disease 
is  the  result  of  illicit  intercourse  and  should  be  tolerated  as  a 
just  visitation  of  God,  seems  still  to  flourish  in  these  countries 
with  fatal  persistency.  In  England  the  communication  of 
venereal  disease  by  illicit  intercourse  is  not  an  actionable  wrong 
if  the  act  of  intercourse  has  been  voluntary,  even  although  there 
has  been  wilful  and  intentional  concealment  of  the  disease.  Ex 
turpi  causa  non  oritur  actio,  it  is  sententiously  said ;  for  there  is 
much  dormitative  virtue  in  a  Latin  maxim.  No  legal  offence  has 
still  been  committed  if  a  husband  contaminates  his  wife,  or  a 


1  A.  Desprgs,  La  Prostitution  a  Paris,  p.  191. 

2F.  Aurientis,  Etude  Medico-legale  sur  la  jurisprudence  actuelle  a 
propos  de  la  Transmission  des  Maladies  Veneriennes,  Th§se  de  Paris, 
1906. 


348  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

wife  her  husband.1  The  "freedom"  enjoyed  in  this  matter  by 
England  and  the  United  States  is  well  illustrated  by  an  American 
case  quoted  by  Dr.  Isidore  Dyer,  of  New  Orleans,  in  his  report  to 
the  Brussels  Conference  on  the  Prevention  of  Venereal  Diseases, 
in  1899 :  "A  patient  with  primary  syphilis  refused  even 
charitable  treatment  and  carried  a  book  wherein  she  kept  the 
number  of  men  she  had  inoculated.  When  I  first  saw  her  she 
declared  the  number  had  reached  two  hundred  and  nineteen  and 
that  she  would  not  be  treated  until  she  had  had  revenge  on  five 
hundred  men/'  In  a  community  where  the  most  elementary 
rules  of  justice  prevailed  facilities  would  exist  to  enable  this 
woman  to  obtain  damages  from  the  man  who  had  injured  her  or 
even  to  secure  his  conviction  to  a  term  of  imprisonment.  In 
obtaining  some  indemnity  for  the  wrong  done  her,  and  securing 
the  "revenge"  she  craved,  she  would  at  the  same  time  have  con- 
ferred a  benefit  on  society.  She  is  shut  out  from  any  action 
against  the  one  person  who  injured  her;  but  as  a  sort  of  com- 
pensation she  is  allowed  to  become  a  radiating  focus  of  disease,  to 
shorten  many  lives,  to  cause  many  deaths,  to  pile  up  incalculable 
damages ;  and  in  so  doing  she  is  to-day  perfectly  within  her  legal 
rights.  A  community  which  encourages  this  state  of  things  is 
not  only  immoral  but  stupid. 

There  seems,  however,  to  be  a  growing  body  of  influential 
opinion,  both  in  England  and  in  the  United  States,  in  favor  of 
making  the  transmission  of  venereal  disease  an  offence  punishable 
by  heavy  fine  or  by  imprisonment.2     In  any  enactment  no  stress 


1  In  England  at  present  "a  husband  knowingly  and  wilfully  infect- 
ing his  wife  with  the  venereal  disease,  cannot  be  convicted  criminally, 
either  under  a  charge  of  assault  or  of  inflicting  grievous  bodily  harm" 
(N.  Geary,  The  Law  of  Marriage,  p.  479).  This  was  decided  in  1888  in 
the  case  of  R.  v.  Clarence  by  nine  judges  to  four  judges  in  the  Court 
for  the  Consideration  of  Crown  Cases  Reserved. 

2  Modern  democratic  sentiment  is  opposed  to  the  sequestration  of 
a  prostitute  merely  because  she  is  diseased.  But  there  can  be  no  rea- 
sonable doubt  whatever  that  if  a  diseased  prostitute  infects  another 
person,  and  is  unable  to  pay  the  very  heavy  damages  which  should  be 
demanded  in  such  a  case,  she  ought  to  be  secluded  and  subjected  to 
treatment.  That  is  necessary  in  the  interests  of  the  community.  But 
it  is  also  necessary,  to  avoid  placing  a  premium  on  the  commission  of 
an  offence  which  would  ensure  gratuitous  treatment  and  provision  for 
a  prostitute  without  means,  that  she  should  be  furnished  with  facilities 
for  treatment  in  any  case. 


THE    CONQUEST    OF    THE    VENEREAL    DISEASES.  349 

should  be  put  on  the  infection  being  conveyed  "knowingly."  Any 
formal  limitation  of  this  kind  is  unnecessary,  as  in  such  a  case  the 
Court  always  takes  into  account  the  offender's  ignorance  or  mere 
negligence,  and  it  is  mischievous  because  it  tends  to  render  an 
enactment  ineffective  and  to  put  a  premium  on  ignorance;  the 
husbands  who  infect  their  wives  with  gonorrhoea  immediately 
after  marriage  have  usually  done  so  from  ignorance,  and  it 
should  be  at  least  necessary  for  them  to  prove  that  they  have 
been  fortified  in  their  ignorance  by  medical  advice.  It  is  some- 
times said  that  the  existing  law  could  be  utilized  for  bringing 
actions  of  this  kind,  and  that  no  greater  facilities  should  be 
offered  for  fear  of  increasing  attempts  at  blackmail.  The 
inutility  of  the  law  at  present  for  this  purpose  is  shown  by  the 
fact  that  it  seldom  or  never  happens  that  any  attempt  is  made 
to  utilize  it,  while  not  only  are  there  a  number  of  existing  punish- 
able offences  which  form  the  subject  of  attempts  at  blackmail, 
but  blackmail  can  still  be  demanded  even  in  regard  to  disreput- 
able actions  that  are  not  legally  punishable  at  all.  Moreover, 
the  attempt  to  levy  blackmail  is  itself  an  offence  always  sternly 
dealt  with  in  the  courts. 

It  is  possible  to  trace  the  beginning  of  a  recognition  that  the 
transmission  of  a  venereal  disease  is  a  matter  of  which  legal 
cognizance  may  be  taken  in  the  English  law  courts.  It  is  now 
well  settled  that  the  infection  of  a  wife  by  her  husband  may  be 
held  to  constitute  the  legal  cruelty  which,  according  to  the 
present  law,  must  be  proved,  in  addition  to  adultery,  before  a 
wife  can  .obtain  divorce  from  her  husband.  In  1777  Eestif  de  la 
Bretonne  proposed  in  his  Gynographes  that  the  communication  of 
a  venereal  disease  should  itself  be  an  adequate  ground  for  divorce ; 
this,  however,  is  not  at  present  generally  accepted.1 

It  is  sometimes  said  that  it  is  very  well  to  make  the 
individual  legally  responsible  for  the  venereal  disease  he  com- 
municates, but  that  the  difficulties  of  bringing  that  responsibility 


1  It  has,  however,  been  decided  by  the  Paris  Court  of  Appeal  that 
for  a  husband  to  marry  when  knowingly  suffering  from  a  venereal  dis- 
ease and  to  communicate  that  disease  to  his  wife  is  a  sufficient  cause  for 
divorce  (Semaine  MGdicale,  May,  1896). 


350  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

home  would  still  remain.  And  those  who  admit  these  difficulties 
frequently  reply  that  at  the  worst  we  should  have  in  our  hands 
a  means  of  educating  responsibility;  the  man  who  deliberately 
ran  the  risk  of  transmitting  such  infection  would  be  made  to  feel 
that  lie  was  no  longer  fairly  within  his  legal  rights  but  had 
clone  a  bad  action.  We  are  thus  led  on  finally  to  what  is  now 
becoming  generally  recognized  as  the  chief  and  central  method  of 
combating  venereal  disease,  if  we  are  to  accept  the  principle  of 
individual  responsibility  as  ruling  in  this  sphere  of  life.  Organ- 
ized sanitary  and  medical  precautions,  and  proper  legal  protection 
for  those  who  have  been  injured,  are  inoperative  without  the 
educative  influence  of  elementary  hygienic  instruction  placed  in 
the  possession  of  every  young  man  and  woman.  In  a  sphere  that 
is  necessarily  so  intimate  medical  organization  and  legal  resort 
can  never  be  all-sufficing;  knowledge  is  needed  at  every  step  in 
every  individual  to  guide  and  even  to  awaken  that  sense  of 
personal  moral  responsibility  which  must  here  always  rule. 
Wherever  the  importance  of  these  questions  is  becoming  acutely 
realized — and  notably  at  the  Congresses  of  the  German  Society 
for  Combating  Venereal  Disease — the  problem  is  resolving  itself 
mainly  into  one  of  education.1  And  although  opinion  and  prac- 
tice in  this  matter  are  to-day  more  advanced  in  Germany  than 
elsewhere  the  conviction  of  this  necessity  is  becoming  scarcely 
less  pronounced  in  all  other  civilized  countries,  in  England  and 
America  as  much  as  in  France  and  the  Scandinavian  lands. 

A  knowledge  of  the  risks  of  disease  by  sexual  intercourse, 
both  in  and  out  of  marriage, — and  indeed,  apart  from  sexual 
intercourse  altogether, — is  a  further  stage  of  that  sexual  education 
which,  as  we  have  already  seen,  must  begin,  so  far  as  the  elements 
are  concerned,  at  a  very  early  age.  Youths  and  girls  should  be 
taught,  as  the  distinguished  Austrian  economist,  Anton  von  Men- 
ger  wrote,  shortly  before  his  death,  in  his  excellent  little  book, 
Neue  Bittenlehre,  that  the  production  of  children  is  a  crime  when 

l  The  large  volume,  entitled  Sexualpadagogik,  containing,  the  Pro- 
ceedings of  the  Third  of  these  Congresses,  almost  ignores  the  special 
subject  of  venereal  disease,  and  is  devoted  to  the  questions  involved  by 
the  general  sexual  education  of  the  young,  which,  as  many  of  the  speakers 
maintained,  must  begin  with  the  child  at  his  mother's  knee. 


THE    CONQUEST    OF    THE    VENEREAL    DISEASES.  351 

the  parents  are  syphilitic  or  otherwise  incompetent  through  trans- 
missible chronic  diseases.  Information  about  venereal  disease 
should  not  indeed  be  given  until  after  puberty  is  well  established. 
It  is  unnecessary  and  undesirable  to  impart  medical  knowledge  to 
young  boys  and  girls  and  to  warn  them  against  risks  they  are 
yet  little  liable  to  be  exposed  to.  It  is  when  the  age  of  strong 
sexual  instinct,  actual  or  potential,  begins  that  the  risks,  under 
some  circumstances,  of  yielding  to  it,  need  to  be  clearly  present 
to  the  mind.  No  one  who  reflects  on  the  actual  facts  of  life 
ought  to  doubt  that  it  is  in  the  highest  degree  desirable  that  every 
adolescent  youth  and  girl  ought  to  receive  some  elementary 
instruction  in  the  general  facts  of  venereal  disease,  tuberculosis, 
and  alcoholism.  These  three  "plagues  of  civilization"  are  so 
wide-spread,  so  subtle  and  manifold  in  their  operation,  that  every- 
one comes  in  contact  with  them  during  life,  and  that  everyone  is 
liable  to  suffer,  even  before  he  is  aware,  perhaps  hopelessly  and 
forever,  from  the  results  of  that  contact.  Vague  declamation 
about  immorality  and  vaguer  warnings  against  it  have  no  effect 
and  possess  no  meaning,  while  rhetorical  exaggeration  is  unneces- 
sary. A  very  simple  and  concise  statement  of  the  actual  facts 
concerning  the  evils  that  beset  life  is  quite  sufficient  and  adequate, 
and  quite  essential.  To  ignore  this  need  is  only  possible  to  those 
who  take  a  dangerously  frivolous  view  of  life. 

It  is  the  young  woman  as  much  as  the  youth  who  needs  this 
enlightenment.  There  are  still  some  persons  so  ill-informed  as 
to  believe  that  though  it  may  be  necessary  to  instruct  the  youth 
it  is  best  to  leave  his  sister  unsullied,  as  they  consider  it,  by  a 
knowledge  of  the  facts  of  life.  This  is  the  very  reverse  of  the 
truth.  It  is  desirable  indeed  that  all  should  be  acquainted  with 
facts  so  vital  to  humanity,  even  although  not  themselves  per- 
sonally concerned.  But  the  girl  is  even  more  concerned  than  the 
youth.  A  man  has  the  matter  more  within  his  own  grasp,  and  if 
he  so  chooses  he  may  avoid  all  the  grosser  risks  of  contact  with 
venereal  disease.  But  it  is  not  so  with  the  woman.  Whatever 
her  own  purity,  she  cannot  be  sure  that  she  may  not  have  to 
guard  against  the  possibility  of  disease  in  her  future  husband 
as  well  as  in  those  to  whom  she  may  entrust  her  child.     It  is  a 


852  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   SEX. 

possibility  which  the  educated  woman,  so  far  from  being  dis- 
pensed from,  is  more  liable  to  encounter  than  is  the  working-class 
woman,  for  venereal  disease  is  less  prevalent  among  the  poor  than 
the  rich.1  The  careful  physician,  even  when  his  patient  is  a 
minister  of  religion,  considers  it  his  duty  to  inquire  if  he  has  had 
syphilis,  and  the  clergyman  of  most  severely  correct  life  recog- 
nizes the  need  of  such  inquiry  and  may  perhaps  smile,  but  seldom 
feels  himself  insulted.  The  relationship  between  husband  and 
wife  is  even  much  more  intimate  and  important  than  that  between 
doctor  and  patient,  and  a  woman  is  not  dispensed  from  the 
necessity  of  such  inquiry  concerning  her  future  husband  by  the 
conviction  that  the  reply  must  surely  be  satisfactory.  Moreover, 
it  may  well  be  in  some  cases  that,  if  she  is  adequately  enlightened, 
she  may  be  the  means  of  saving  him,  before  it  is  too  late,  from  the 
guilt  of  premature  marriage  and  its  fateful  consequences,  so 
deserving  to  earn  his  everlasting  gratitude.  Even  if  she  fails  in 
winning  that,  she  still  has  her  duty  to  herself  and  to  the  future 
race  which  her  children  will  help  to  form. 

In  most  countries  there  is  a  growing  feeling  in  favor  of  the  enlight- 
enment of  young  women  equally  with  young  men  as  regards  venereal 
diseases.  Thus  in  Germany  Max  Flesch,  in  his  Prostitution  und  Frauen- 
Tcrankheiten,  considers  that  at  the  end  of  their  school  days  all  girls 
should  receive  instruction  concerning  the  grave  physical  and  social  dan- 
gers to  which  women  are  exposed  in  life.  In  France  Duclaux  (in  hia 
UHygiene  Sociale)  is  emphatic  that  women  must  be  taught.  "Already," 
he  states,  "doctors  who  by  custom  have  been  made,  in  spite  of  them- 
selves, the  husband's  accomplices,  will  tell  you  of  the  ironical  gaze  they 
sometimes  encounter  when  they  seek  to  lead  a  wife  astray  concerning 
the  causes  of  her  ills.  The  day  is  approaching  of  a  revolt  against  the 
social  lie  which  has  made  so  many  victims,  and  you  will  be  obliged  to 
teach  women  what  they  need  to  know  in  order  to  guard  themselves 
against  you."     It  is  the  same  in  America.     Reform  in  this  field,  Isidore 


1  "Workmen,  soldiers,  and  so  on,"  Neisser  remarks  (Senator  and 
Kaminer,  Health  and  Disease  in  Relation  to  Marriage,  vol.  ii,  p.  485), 
"can  more  easily  find  non-prostitute  girls  of  their  own  class  willing  to 
enter  into  amorous  relations  with  them  which  result  in  sexual  inter- 
course, and  they  are  therefore  less  exposed  to  the  danger  of  infection 
than  those  men  who  have  recourse  almost  exclusively  to  prostitutes" 
(see  also  Bloch,  Sexualleben  unserer  Zeit,  p.  437). 


THE    CONQUEST    OF    THE    VENEREAL    DISEASES.  353 

Dyer  declares,  must  emblazon  on  its  flag  the  motto,  "Knowledge  is 
Health,"  as  well  of  mind  as  of  body,  for  women  as  well  as  for  men. 
In  a  discussion  introduced  by  Denslow  Lewis  at  the  annual  meeting  of 
the  American  Medical  Association  in  1901  on  the  limitation  of  venereal 
diseases  (Medico-Legal  Journal,  June  and  September,  1903),  there  was 
a  fairly  general  agreement  among  all  the  speakers  that  almost  or  quite 
the  chief  method  of  prevention  lay  in  education,  the  education  of  women 
as  much  as  of  men.  "Education  lies  at  the  bottom  of  the  whole  thing," 
declared  one  speaker  (Seneca  Egbert,  of  Philadelphia),  "and  we  will 
never  gain  much  headway  until  every  young  man,  and  every  young 
woman,  even  before  she  falls  in  love  and  becomes  engaged,  knows  what 
these  diseases  are,  and  what  it  will  mean  if  she  marries  a  man  who  has 
contracted  them."  "Educate  father  and  mother,  and  they  will  educate 
their  sons  and  daughters,"  exclaims  Egbert  Grandin,  more  especially  in 
regard  to  gonorrhoea  (Medical  Record,  May  26,  1906)  ;  "I  lay  stress  on 
the  daughter  because  she  becomes  the  chief  sufferer  from  inoculation,  and 
it  is  her  right  to  know  that  she  should  protect  herself  against  the  gonor- 
rhoeic  as  well  as  against  the  alcoholic." 

We  must  fully  face  the  fact  that  it  is  the  woman  herself  who 
must  be  accounted  responsible,  as  much  as  a  man,  for  securing  the 
right  conditions  of  a  marriage  she  proposes  to  enter  into.  In 
practice,  at  the  outset,  that  responsibility  may  no  doubt  be  in  part 
delegated  to  parents  or  guardians.  It  is  unreasonable  that  any 
false  delicacy  should  be  felt  about  this  matter  on  either  side. 
Questions  of  money  and  of  income  are  discussed  before  marriage, 
and  as  public  opinion  grows  sounder  none  will  question  the 
necessity  of  discussing  the  still  more  serious  question  of  health, 
alike  that  of  the  prospective  bridegroom  and  of  the  bride.  An 
incalculable  amount  of  disease  and  marital  unhappiness  would  be 
prevented  if  before  an  engagement  was  finally  concluded  each 
party  placed  himself  or  herself  in  the  hands  of  a  physician  and 
authorized  him  to  report  to  the  other  party.  Such  a  report 
would  extend  far  beyond  venereal  disease.  If  its  necessity  became 
generally  recognized  it  would  put  an  end  to  much  fraud  which 
now  takes  place  when  entering  the  marriage  bond.  It  constantly 
happens  at  present  that  one  party  or  the  other  conceals  the 
existence  of  some  serious  disease  or  disability  which  is  speedily 
discovered  after  marriage,  sometimes  with  a  painful  and  alarming 
shock — as  when  a  man  discovers  his  wife  in  an  epileptic  fit  on 


354  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  SEX. 

the  wedding  night — and  always  with  the  bitter  and  abiding  sense 
of  having  been  duped.  There  can  be  no  reasonable  doubt  that 
such  concealment  is  an  adequate  cause  of  divorce.  Sir  Thomas 
More  doubtless  sought  to  guard  against  such  frauds  when  he 
ordained  in  his  Utopia  that  each  party  should  before  marriage 
be  shown  naked  to  the  other.  The  quaint  ceremony  he  describes 
was  based  on  a  reasonable  idea,  for  it  is  ludicrous,  if  it  were  not 
often  tragic  in  its  results,  that  any  person  should  be  asked  to 
undertake  to  embrace  for  life  a  person  whom  he  or  she  has  not  so 
much  as  seen. 

It  may  be  necessary  to  point  out  that  every  movement  in 
this  direction  must  be  the  spontaneous  action  of  individuals 
directing  their  own  lives  according  to  the  rules  of  an  enlightened 
conscience,  and  cannot  be  initiated  by  the  dictation  of  the  com- 
munity as  a  whole  enforcing  its  commands  by  law.  In  these 
matters  law  can  only  come  in  at  the  end,  not  at  the  beginning. 
In  the  essential  matters  of  marriage  and  procreation  laws  are 
primarily  made  in  the  brains  and  consciences  of  individuals  for 
their  own  guidance.  Unless  such  laws  are  already  embodied  in 
the  actual  practice  of  the  great  majority  of  the  community  it  is 
useless  for  parliaments  to  enact  them  by  statute.  They  will  be 
ineffective  or  else  they  will  be  worse  than  ineffective  by  producing 
undesigned  mischiefs.  We  can  only  go  to  the  root  of  the  matter 
by  insisting  on  education  in  moral  responsibility  and  instruction 
in  matters  of  fact. 

The  question  arises  as  to  the  best  person  to  impart  this 
instruction.  As  we  have  seen  there  can  be  little  doubt  that  before 
puberty  the  parents,  and  especially  the  mother,  are  the  proper 
instructors  of  their  children  in  esoteric  knowledge.  But  after 
puberty  the  case  is  altered.  The  boy  and  the  girl  are  becoming 
less  amenable  to  parental  influence,  there  is  greater  shyness  on 
both  sides,  and  the  parents  rarely  possess  the  more  technical 
knowledge  that  is  now  required.  At  this  stage  it  seems  that  the 
assistance  of  the  physician,  of  the  family  doctor  if  he  has  the 
oroper  qualities  for  the  task,  should  be  called  in.  The  plan 
usually  adopted,  and  now  widely  carried  out,  is  that  of  lectures 
setting  forth  the  main  facts  concerning  venereal  diseases,  their 


THE    CONQUEST    OF    THE    VENEREAL    DISEASES.  355 

dangers,  and  allied  topics.1  This  method  is  quite  excellent. 
Such  lectures  should  be  delivered  at  intervals  by  medical  lecturers 
at  all  urban,  educational,  manufacturing,  military,  and  naval 
centres,  wherever  indeed  a  large  number  of  young  persons  are 
gathered  together.  It  should  be  the  business  of  the  central 
educational  authority  either  to  carry  them  out  or  to  enforce  on 
those  controlling  or  employing  young  persons  the  duty  of  provid- 
ing such  lectures.  The  lectures  should  be  free  to  all  who  have 
attained  the  age  of  sixteen. 

In  Germany  the  principle  of  instruction  by  lectures  concerning 
venereal  diseases  seems  to  have  become  established,  at  all  events  so  far 
as  young  men  are  concerned,  and  such  lectures  are  constantly  becoming 
more  usual.  In  1907  the  Minister  of  Education  established  courses  of 
lectures  by  doctors  on  sexual  hygiene  and  venereal  diseases  for  higher 
schools  and  educational  institutions,  though  attendance  was  not  made 
compulsory.  The  courses  now  frequently  given  by  medical  men  to  the 
higher  classes  in  German  secondary  schools  on  the  general  principles  of 
sexual  anatomy  and  physiology  nearly  always  include  sexual  hygiene 
with  special  reference  to  venereal  diseases  (see,  e.g.,  SexualpadagogiJc, 
pp.  131-153).  In  Austria,  also,  lectures  on  personal  hygiene  and  the 
dangers  of  venereal  disease  are  delivered  to  students  about  to  leave  the 
gymnasium  for  the  university;  and  the  working  men's  clubs  have 
instituted  regular  courses  of  lectures  on  the  same  subjects  delivered  by 
physicians.  In  France  many  distinguished  men,  both  inside  and  outside 
the  medical  profession,  are  working  for  the  cause  of  the  instruction  of 
the  young  in  sexual  hygiene,  though  they  have  to  contend  against  a 
more  obstinate  degree  of  prejudice  and  prudery  on  the  part  of  the  middle 
class  than  is  to  be  found  in  the  Germanic  lands.  The  Commission 
Extraparlementaire  du  Regime  des  Moeurs,  with  the  conjunction  of 
Augagneur,  Alfred  Fournier,  Yves  Guyot,  Gide,  and  other  distinguished 
professors,  teachers,  etc.,  has  lately  pronounced  in  favor  of  the  official 
establishment  of  instruction  in  sexual  hygiene,  to  be  given  in  the  highest 
classes  at  the  lycees,  or  in  the  earliest  class  at  higher  educational  col- 
leges; such  instruction,  it  is  argued,  would  not  only  furnish  needed 
enlightenment,  but  also  educate  the  sense  of  moral  responsibility.  There 
is  in  France,  also,  an  active  and  distinguished  though  unofficial  Societe 
Frangaise  de  Prophylaxie  Sanitaire  et  Morale,  which  delivers  public 
lectures  on  sexual   hygiene.     Fournier,   Pinard,   Burlureaux  and  other 


i  The  character  and  extent  of  such  lectures  are  fully  discussed  in 
the  Proceedings  of  the  Third  Congress  of  the  German  Society  for  Com- 
bating Venereal  Diseases,  SexualpadagogiJc,  1907. 


356  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   SEX. 

eminent  physicians  have  written  pamphlets  on  this  subject  for  popular 
distribution  (see,  e.g.,  Le  Progres  Medical  of  September,  1907).  In 
England  and  the  United  States  very  little  has  yet  been  done  in  this 
direction,  but  in  the  United  States,  at  all  events,  opinion  in  favor  of 
action  is  rapidly  growing  (see,  e.g.,  W.  A.  Funk,  "The  Venereal  Peril.'' 
Medical  Record,  April  13,  1907).  The  American  Society  of  Sanitary  and 
Moral  Prophylaxis  (based  on  the  parent  society  founded  in  Paris  in 
1900  by  Fournier)  was  established  in  New  York  in  1905.  There  are 
similar  societies  in  Chicago  and  Philadelphia.  The  main  object  is  to 
study  venereal  diseases  and  to  work  toward  their  social  control.  Doc- 
tors, laymen,  and  women  are  members.  Lectures  and  short  talks  are 
now  given  under  the  auspices  of  these  societies  to  small  groups  of  young 
women  in  social  settlements,  and  in  other  ways,  with  encouraging  suc- 
cess; it  is  found  to  be  an  excellent  method  of  reaching  the  young  women 
of  the  woi'king  classes.  Both  men  and  women  physicians  take  part  in 
the  lectures  (Clement  Cleveland,  Presidential  Address  on  "Prophylaxis 
of  Venereal  Diseases,"  Transactions  American  Gynaecological  Society, 
Philadelphia,  vol.  xxxii,  1907). 

An  important  auxiliary  method  of  carrying  out  the  task  of  sexual 
hygiene,  and  at  the  same  time  of  spreading  useful  enlightenment,  is 
furnished  by  the  method  of  giving  to  every  syphilitic  patient  in  clinics 
where  such  cases  are  treated  a  card  of  instruction  for  his  guidance  in 
hygienic  matters,  together  with  a  warning  of  the  risks  of  marriage 
within  four  or  five  years  after  infection,  and  in  no  case  without  medical 
advice.  Such  printed  instruction,  in  clear,  simple,  and  incisive  language, 
should  be  put  into  the  hands  of  every  syphilitic  patient  as  a  matter  of 
routine,  and  it  might  be  as  well  to  have  a  corresponding  card  for  gonor- 
rheal patients.  This  plan  has  already  been  introduced  at  some  hospitals, 
and  it  is  so  simple  and  unobjectionable  a  precaution  that  it  will,  no 
doubt,  be  generally  adopted.  In  some  countries  this  measure  is  carried 
out  on  a  wider  scale.  Thus  in  Austria,  as  the  result  of  a  movement  in 
which  several  university  professors  have  taken  an  active  part,  leaflets 
and  circulars,  explaining  briefly  the  chief  symptoms  of  venereal  diseases 
and  warning  against  quacks  and  secret  remedies,  are  circulated  among 
young  laborers  and  factory  hands,  matriculating  students,  and  scholars 
who  are  leaving  trade  schools. 

In  France,  where  great  social  questions  are  sometimes  faced  with 
a  more  chivalrous  daring  than  elsewhere,  the  dangers  of  syphilis,  and 
the  social  position  of  the  prostitute,  have  alike  been  dealt  with  by  dis- 
tinguished novelists  and  dramatists.  Huysmans  inaugurated  this  move- 
ment with  his  first  novel,  Marthe,  which  was  immediately  suppressed 
by  the  police.  Shortly  afterwards  Edmond  de  Goncourt  published  La 
Fille  Elisa,  the  first  notable  novel  of  the  kind  by  a  distinguished  author. 
It  was  written  with  much  reticence,  and  was  not  indeed  a  work  of  high 


THE    CONQUEST    OF    THE    VENEREAL    DISEASES,  857 

artistic  value,  but  it  boldly  faced  a  great  social  problem  and  clearly  set 
forth  tbe  evils  of  the  common  attitude  towards  prostitution.  It  was 
dramatized  and  played  by  Antoine  at  the  Theatre  Libre,  but  when,  in 
1891,  Antoine  wished  to  produce  it  at  the  Porte-Saint-Martin  Theatre, 
the  censor  interfered  and  prohibited  the  play  on  account  of  its  "eon- 
texture  generale."  The  Minister  of  Education  defended  this  decision  on 
the  ground  that  there  was  much  in  the  play  that  might  arouse  repug- 
nance and  disgust.  "Repugnance  here  is  more  moral  than  attraction," 
exclaimed  M.  Paul  Deroulede,  and  the  newspapers  criticized  a  censure 
which  permitted  on  the  stage  all  the  trivial  indecencies  which  favor 
prostitution,  but  cannot  tolerate  any  attack  on  prostitution.  In  more 
recent  years  the  brothers  Margueritte,  both  in  novels  and  in  journalism, 
have  largely  devoted  their  distinguished  abilities  and  high  literary  skill 
to  the  courageous  and  enlightened  advocacy  of  many  social  reforms. 
Victor  Margueritte,  in  his  Prostituee  (1907) — a  novel  which  has  at- 
tracted wide  attention  and  been  translated  into  various  languages — has 
sought  to  represent  the  condition  of  women  in  our  actual  society,  and 
more  especially  the  condition  of  the  prostitute  under  what  he  regards 
as  the  odious  and  iniquitous  system  still  prevailing.  The  book  is  a 
faithful  picture  of  the  real  facts,  thanks  to  the  assistance  the  author 
received  from  the  Paris  Prefecture  of  Police,  and  largely  for  that  reason 
is  not  altogether  a  satisfactory  work  of  art,  but  it  vividly  and  poignantly 
represents  the  cruelty,  indifference,  and  hypocrisy  so  often  shown  by  men 
towards  women,  and  is  a  book  which,  on  that  account,  cannot  be  too 
widely  read.  One  of  the  most  notable  of  modern  plays  is  Brieux's  Les 
Avaries  (1902).  This  distinguished  dramatist,  himself  a  medical  man, 
dedicates  his  play  to  Fournier,  the  greatest  of  syphilographers.  "I  think 
with  you,"  he  writes  here,  "that  syphilis  will  lose  much  of  its  danger 
when  it  is  possible  to  speak  openly  of  an  evil  which  is  neither  a  shame 
nor  a  punishment,  and  when  those  who  suffer  from  it,  knowing  what 
evils  they  may  propagate,  will  better  understand  their  duties  towards 
others  and  towards  themselves."  The  story  developed  in  the  drama  is 
the  old  and  typical  story  of  the  young  man  who  has  spent  his  bachelor 
days  in  what  he  considers  a  discrete  and  regular  manner,  having  only 
had  two  mistresses,  neither  of  them  prostitutes,  but  at  the  end  of  this 
period,  at  a  gay  supper  at  which  he  bids  farewell  to  his  bachelor  life, 
he  commits  a  fatal  indiscretion  and  becomes  infected  by  syphilis;  his 
marriage  is  approaching  and  he  goes  to  a  distinguished  specialist  who 
warns  him  that  treatment  takes  time,  and  that  marriage  is  impossible 
for  several  years;  he  finds  a  quack,  however,  who  undertakes  to  cure 
him  in  six  months;  at  the  end  of  the  time  he  marries;  a  syphilitic 
child  is  born;  the  wife  discovers  the  state  of  things  and  forsakes  her 
home  to  return  to  her  parents;  her  indignant  father,  a  deputy  in  Par- 
liament, arrives  in  Paris;   the  last  word  is  with  the  great  specialist  who 


358  PSYCHOLOGY  OF   SEX. 

brings  finally  some  degree  of  peace  and  hope  into  the  family.  The  chief 
morals  Brieux  points  out  are  that  it  is  the  duty  of  the  bride's  parents 
before  marriage  to  ascertain  the  bridegroom's  health;  that  the  bride- 
groom should  have  a  doctor's  certificate;  that  at  every  marriage  the 
part  of  the  doctors  is  at  least  as  important  as  that  of  the  lawyers. 
Even  if  it  were  a  less  accomplished  work  of  art  than  it  is,  Lies  Avarics 
is  a  play  which,  from  the  social  and  educative  point  of  view  alone,  all 
who  have  reached  the  age  of  adolescence  should  be  compelled  to  see. 

Another  aspect  of  the  same  problem  has  been  presented  in  Plus 
Fort  que  le  Mai,  a  book  written  in  dramatic  form  (though  not  as  a 
properly  constituted  play  intended  for  the  stage)  by  a  distinguished 
French  medical  author  who  here  adopts  the  name  of  Espy  de  Metz.  The 
author  (who  is  not,  however,  pleading  pro  domo)  calls  for  a  more  sym- 
pathetic attitude  towards  those  who  suffer  from  syphilis,  and  though 
he  writes  with  much  less  dramatic  skill  than  Brieux,  and  scarcely  pre- 
sents his  moral  in  so  unequivocal  a  form,  his  work  is  a  notable  con- 
tribution to  the  dramatic  literature  of  syphilis. 

It  will  probably  be  some  time  before  these  questions,  poignant  as 
they  are  from  the  dramatic  point  of  view,  and  vitally  important  from 
the  social  point  of  view,  are  introduced  on  the  English  or  the  American 
stage.  It  is  a  remarkable  fact  that,  notwithstanding  the  Puritanic  ele- 
ments which  still  exist  in  Anglo-Saxon  thought  and  feeling  generally, 
the  Puritanic  aspect  of  life  has  never  received  embodiment  in  the  Eng- 
lish or  American  drama.  On  the  English  stage  it  is  never  permitted 
to  hint  at  the  tragic  side  of  wantonness;  vice  must  always  be  made 
seductive,  even  though  a  deus  ex  maehina  causes  it  to  collapse  at  the  end 
of  the  performance.  As  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw  has  said,  the  English  thea- 
trical method  by  no  means  banishes  vice ;  it  merely  consents  that  it  shall 
be  made  attractive;  its  charms  are  advertised  and  its  penalties  sup- 
pressed. "Now,  it  is  futile  to  plead  that  the  stage  is  not  the  proper 
place  for  the  representation  and  discussion  of  illegal  operations,  incest, 
and  venereal  disease.  If  the  stage  is  the  proper  place  for  the  exhibition 
and  discussion  of  seduction,  adultery,  promiscuity,  and  prostitution,  it 
must  be  thrown  open  to  all  the  consequences  of  these  things,  or  it  will 
demoralize  the  nation." 

The  impulse  to  insist  that  vice  shall  always  be  made  attractive  is 
not  really,  notwithstanding  appearances,  a  vicious  impulse.  It  arises 
from  a  mental  confusion,  a  common  psychic  tendency,  which  is  by  no 
means  confined  to  Anglo-Saxon  lands,  and  is  even  more  well  marked 
among  the  better  educated  in  the  merely  literary  sense,  than  among  the 
worse  educated  people.  The  aesthetic  is  confused  with  the  moral,  and 
what  arouses  disgust  is  thus  regarded  as  immoral.  In  France  the  novels 
of  Zola,  the  most  pedestrianally  moralistic  of  writers,  were  for  a  long 
time  supposed  to  be  immoral  because  they  were  often  disgusting.    The 


THE    CONQUEST    OF    THE    VENEKEAL    DISEASES.  359 

same  feeling'  is  still  more  widespread  in  England.  If  a  prostitute  is 
brought  on  the  stage,  and  she  is  pretty,  well-dressed,  seductive,  she  may 
gaily  sail  through  the  play  and  every  one  is  satisfied.  But  if  she  were 
not  particularly  pretty,  well-dressed,  or  seductive,  if  it  were  made  plain 
that  she  was  diseased  and  was  reckless  in  infecting  others  with  that 
disease,  if  it  were  hinted  that  she  could  on  occasion  be  foul-mouthed,  if, 
in  short,  a  picture  were  shown  from  life — then  we  should  hear  that  the 
unfortunate  dramatist  had  committed  something  that  was  "disgusting" 
and  "immoral."  Disgusting  it  might  be,  but,  on  that  very  account,  it 
would  be  moral.  There  is  a  distinction  here  that  the  psychologist  cannot 
too  often  point  out  or  the  moralist  too  often  emphasize. 

It  is  not  for  the  physician  to  complicate  and  confuse  his  own 
task  as  teacher  by  mixing  it  up  with  considerations  which  belong 
to  the  spiritual  sphere.  But  in  carrying  out  impartially  his  own 
special  work  of  enlightenment  he  will  always  do  well  to  remem- 
ber that  there  is  in  the  adolescent  mind,  as  it  has  been  necessary 
to  point  out  in  a  previous  chapter,  a  spontaneous  force  working 
on  the  side  of  sexual  hygiene.  Those  who  believe  that  the 
adolescent  mind  is  merely  bent  on  sensual  indulgence  are  not  less 
false  and  mischievous  in  their  influence  than  are  those  who  think 
it  possible  and  desirable  for  adolescents  to  be  preserved  in  sheer 
sexual  ignorance.  However  concealed,  suppressed,  or  deformed — 
usually  by  the  misplaced  and  premature  zeal  of  foolish  parents 
and  teachers — there  arise  at  puberty  ideal  impulses  which,  even 
though  they  may  be  rooted  in  sex,  yet  in  their  scope  transcend 
sex.  These  are  capable  of  becoming  far  more  potent  guides  of  the 
physical  sex  impulse  than  are  merely  material  or  even  hygienic 
considerations. 

It  is  time  to  summarize  and  conclude  this  discussion  of  the 
prevention  of  venereal  disease,  which,  though  it  may  seem  to  the 
superficial  observer  to  be  merely  a  medical  and  sanitary  question 
outside  the  psychologist's  sphere,  is  yet  seen  on  closer  view  to  be 
intimately  related  even  to  the  most  spiritual  conception  of  the 
sexual  relationships.  Not  only  are  venereal  diseases  the  foes  to 
the  finer  development  of  the  race,  but  we  cannot  attain  to  any 
wholesome  and  beautiful  vision  of  the  relationships  of  sex  so  long 
as  such  relationships  are  liable  at  every  moment  to  be  corrupted 
and   undermined    at    their   source.     We    cannot    yet    precisely 


360  PSYCHOLOGY  OF   SEX. 

measure  the  interval  which  must  elapse  before,  so  far  as  Europe  at 
least  is  concerned,  syphilis  and  gonorrhoea  are  sent  to  that  limbo 
of  monstrous  old  dead  diseases  to  which  plague  and  leprosy  have 
gone  and  small-pox  is  already  drawing  near.  But  society  is 
beginning  to  realize  that  into  this  field  also  must  be  brought  the 
weapons  of  light  and  air,  the  sword  and  the  breastplate  with 
which  all  diseases  can  alone  be  attacked.  As  we  have  seen,  there 
are  four  methods  by  which  in  the  more  enlightened  countries 
venereal  disease  is  now  beginning  to  be  combated.1  (1)  By 
proclaiming  openly  that  the  venereal  diseases  are  diseases  like 
any  other  disease,  although  more  subtle  and  terrible  than  most, 
which  may  attack  anyone  from  the  unborn  baby  to  its  grand- 
mother, and  that  they  are  not,  more  than  other  diseases,  the 
shameful  penalties  of  sin,  from  which  relief  is  only  to  be  sought, 
if  at  all,  by  stealth,  but  human  calamities;  (2)  by  adopting 
methods  of  securing  official  information  concerning  the  extent, 
distribution,  and  variation  of  venereal  disease,  through  the  already 
recognized  plan  of  notification  and  otherwise,  and  by  providing 
such  facilities  for  treatment,  especially  for  free  treatment,  as  may 
be  found  necessary ;  (3)  by  training  the  individual  sense  of  moral 
responsibility,  so  that  every  member  of  the  community  may 
realize  that  to  inflict  a  serious  disease  on  another  person,  even  only 
as  a  result  of  reckless  negligence,  is  a  more  serious  offence  than 
if  he  or  she  had  used  the  knife  or  the  gun  or  poison  as  the  method 
of  attack,  and  that  it  is  necessary  to  introduce  special  legal 
provision  in  every  country  to  assist  the  recovery  of  damages  for 
such  injuries  and  to  inflict  penalties  by  loss  of  liberty  or  other- 
wise; (4)  by  the  spread  of  hygienic  knowledge,  so  that  all 
adolescents,  youths  and  girls  alike,  may  be  furnished  at  the  outset 
of  adult  life  with  an  equipment  of  information  which  will  assist 
them  to  avoid  the  grosser  risks  of  contamination  and  enable  them 
to  recognize  and  avoid  danger  at  the  earliest  stages. 


1 1  leave  out  of  account,  as  beyond  the  scope  of  the  present  work, 
the  auxiliary  aids  to  the  suppression  of  venereal  diseases  furnished  by 
the  promising  new  methods,  only  now  beginning  to  be  understood,  of 
treating  or  even  aborting  such  diseases  ( see,  e.g.,  Metchnikoff,  The  New 
Hygiene,  1906). 


THE    CONQUEST    OF    THE    VENEREAL    DISEASES.  361 

A  few  years  ago,  when  no  method  of  combating  venereal 
disease  was  known  except  that  system  of  police  regulation  which 
is  now  in  its  decadence,  it  would  have  been  impossible  to  bring 
forward  such  considerations  as  these;  they  would  have  seemed 
Utopian.  To-day  they  are  not  only  recognizable  as  practical,  but 
they  are  being  actually  put  into  practice,  although,  it  is  true,  with 
very  varying  energy  and  insight  in  different  countries.  Yet  it 
is  certain  that  in  the  competition  of  nationalities,  as  Max  von 
ISTiessen  has  well  said,  "that  country  will  best  take  a  leading 
place  in  the  march  of  civilization  which  has  the  foresight  and 
courage  to  introduce  and  carry  through  those  practical  movements 
of  sexual  hygiene  which  have  so  wide  and  significant  a  bearing  on 
its  own  future,  and  that  of  the  human  race  generally.1 

l  Max  von  Niessen,  "Herr  Doktor,  darf  ich  heiraten?"  Mutterschuts, 
1906,  p.  352. 


CHAPTEE  IX. 

SEXUAL  MORALITY. 

Prostitution  in  Relation  to  Our  Marriage  System — Marriage  and 
Morality — The  Definition  of  the  Term  "Morality" — Theoretical  Morality 
— Its  Division  Into  Traditional  Morality  and  Ideal  Morality — Practical 
Morality — Practical  Morality  Based  on  Custom — The  Only  Subject  of 
Scientific  Ethics — The  Reaction  Between  Theoretical  and  Practical 
Morality — Sexual  Morality  in  the  Past  an  Application  of  Economic 
Morality — The  Combined  Rigidity  and  Laxity  of  This  Morality — The 
Growth  of  a  Specific  Sexual  Morality  and  the  Evolution  of  Moral  Ideals 
— Manifestations  of  Sexual  Morality — Disregard  of  the  Forms  of  Mar- 
riage— Trial  Marriage — Marriage  After  Conception  of  Child — Phenomena 
in  Germany,  Anglo-Saxon  Countries,  Russia,  etc. — The  Status  of  Woman 
— The  Historical  Tendency  Favoring  Moral  Equality  of  Women  with 
Men — The  Theory  of  the  Matriarchate — Mother-Descent — Women  in 
Babylonia — Egypt — Rome — The  Eighteenth  and  Nineteenth  Centuries — 
The  Historical  Tendency  Favoring  Moral  Inequality  of  Woman — The 
Ambiguous  Influence  of  Christianity — Influence  of  Teutonic  Custom  and 
Feudalism — Chivalry— Woman  in  England — The  Sale  of  Wives — The 
Vanishing  Subjection  of  Woman— Inaptitude  of  the  Modern  Man  to 
Domineer — The  Growth  of  Moral  Responsibility  in  Women — The  Con- 
comitant Development  of  Economic  Independence — The  Increase  of 
Women  Who  Work — Invasion  of  the  Modern  Industrial  Field  by  Women 
— In  How  Far  This  Is  Socially  Justifiable — The  Sexual  Responsibility 
of  Women  and  Its  Consequences — The  Alleged  Moral  Inferiority  of 
Women — The  "Self-Sacrifice"  of  Women — Society  Not  Concerned  with 
Sexual  Relationships — Procreation  the  Sole  Sexual  Concern  of  the  State 
— The  Supreme  Importance  of  Maternity. 

It  has  been  necessary  to  deal  fully  with  the  phenomena  of 
prostitution  because,  however  aloof  we  may  personally  choose  to 
hold  ourselves  from  those  phenomena,  they  really  bring  us  to  the 
heart  of  the  sexual  question  in  so  far  as  it  constitutes  a  social 
problem.  If  we  look  at  prostitution  from  the  outside,  as  an 
objective  phenomenon,  as  a  question  of  social  dynamics,  it  is  seen 
to  be  not  a  merely  accidental  and  eliminable  incident  of  our 
present  marriage  system  but  an  integral  part  of  it,  without  which 
it  would  fall  to  pieces.  This  will  probably  be  fairly  clear  to  all 
who  have  followed  the  preceding  exposition  of  prostitutional 
(362) 


SEXUAL    MORALITY.  363 

phenomena.  There  is,  however,  more  than  this  to  be  said.  Not 
only  is  prostitution  to-day,  as  it  has  been  for  more  than  two 
thousand  years,  the  buttress  of  our  marriage  system,  but  if  we 
look  at  marriage,  not  from  the  outside  as  a  formal  institution, 
but  from  the  inside  with  relation  to  the  motives  that  constitute 
it,  we  find  that  marriage  in  a  large  proportion  of  cases  is  itself 
in  certain  respects  a  form  of  prostitution.  This  has  been 
emphasized  so  often  and  from  so  many  widely  different  stand- 
points that  it  may  seem  hardly  necessary  to  labor  the  point  here. 
But  the  point  is  one  of  extreme  importance  in  relation  to  the 
question  of  sexual  morality.  Our  social  conditions  are  unfavor- 
able to  the  development  of  a  high  moral  feeling  in  woman.  The 
difference  between  the  woman  who  sells  herself  in  prostitution 
and  the  woman  who  sells  herself  in  marriage,  according  to  the 
saying  of  Marro  already  quoted,  "is  only  a  difference  in  price 
and  duration  of  the  contract."  Or,  as  Forel  puts  it,  marriage  is 
"a  more  fashionable  form  of  prostitution/'  that  is  to  say,  a  mode 
of  obtaining,  or  disposing  of,  for  monetary  considerations,  a 
sexual  commodity.  Marriage  is,  indeed,  not  merely  a  more 
fashionable  form  of  prostitution,  it  is  a  form  sanctified  by  law 
and  religion,  and  the  question  of  morality  is  not  allowed  to 
intrude.  Morality  may  be  outraged  with  impunity  provided  that 
law  and  religion  have  been  invoked.  The  essential  principle  of 
prostitution  is  thus  legalized  and  sanctified  among  us.  That  is 
why  it  is  so  difficult  to  arouse  any  serious  indignation,  or  to  main- 
tain any  reasoned  objections,  against  our  prostitution  considered 
by  itself.  The  most  plausible  ground  is  that  of  those1  who,  bring- 
ing marriage  down  to  the  level  of  prostitution,  maintain  that  the 
prostitute  is  a  "blackleg"  who  is  accepting  less  than  the  "market 
rate  of  wages,"  i.e.,  marriage,  for  the  sexual  services  she  renders. 
But  even  this  low  ground  is  quite  unsafe.  The  prostitute  is 
really  paid  extremely  well  considering  how  little  she  gives  in 
return ;  the  wife  is  really  paid  extremely  badly  considering  how 
much  she  often  gives,  and  how  much  she  necessarily  gives  up. 
For  the  sake  of  the  advantage  of  economic  dependence  on  her 


l  E.g.,  E.  Belfort  Bax,  Outspoken  Essays,  p.  6. 


364  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   SEX. 

husband,  she  must  give  up,  as  Ellen  Key  observes,  those  rights 
over  her  children,  her  property,  her  work,  and  her  own  person 
which  she  enjoys  as  an  unmarried  woman,  even,  it  may  be  added, 
as  a  prostitute.  The  prostitute  never  signs  away  the  right  over 
her  own  person,  as  the  wife  is  compelled  to  do;  the  prostitute, 
unlike  the  wife,  retains  her  freedom  and  her  personal  rights, 
although  these  may  not  often  be  of  much  worth.  It  is  the  wife 
rather  than  the  prostitute  who  is  the  "blackleg." 

It  is  by  no  means  only  during  recent  years  that  our  marriage  sys- 
tem has  been  arraigned  before  the  bar  of  morals.  Forty  years  ago  James 
Hinton  exhausted  the  vocabulary  of  denunciation  in  describing  the 
immorality  and  selfish  licentiousness  which  our  marriage  system  covers 
with  the  cloak  of  legality  and  sanctity.  "There  is  an  unsoundness  in 
our  marriage  relations,"  Hinton  wrote.  "Not  only  practically  are  they 
dreadful,  but  they  do  not  answer  to  feelings  and  convictions  far  too 
widespread  to  be  wisely  ignored.  Take  the  case  of  women  of  marked 
eminence  consenting  to  be  a  married  man's  mistress;  of  pure  and  simple 
girls  saying  they  cannot  see  why  they  should  have  a  marriage  by  law; 
of  a  lady  saying  that  if  she  were  in  love  she  would  not  have  any  legal 
tie;  of  its  being  necessary — or  thought  so  by  good  and  wise  men — to 
keep  one  sex  in  bitter  and  often  fatal  ignorance.  These  things  (and  how 
many  more)  show  some  deep  unsoundness  in  the  marriage  relations. 
This  must  be  probed  and  searched  to  the  bottom." 

At  an  earlier  date,  in  1847,  Gross-Hoffinger,  in  his  Die  Schicksale 
der  Frauen  und  die  ProstiUtfion — a  remarkable  book  which  Bloch,  with 
little  exaggeration,  describes  as  possessing  an  epoch-marking  signifi- 
cance^— vigorously  showed  that  the  problem  of  prostitution  is  in  reality 
the  problem  of  marriage,  and  that  we  can  only  reform  away  prostitution 
by  reforming  marriage,  regarded  as  a  compulsory  institution  resting  on 
an  antiquated  economic  basis.  Gross-Hoffinger  was  a  pioneering  pre- 
cursor of  Ellen  Key. 

More  than  a  century  and  a  half  earlier  a  man  of  very  different 
type  scathingly  analyzed  the  morality  of  his  time,  with  a  brutal  frank- 
ness, indeed,  that  seemed  to  his  contemporaries  a  revoltingly  cynical 
attitude  towards  their  sacred  institutions,  and  they  felt  that  nothing 
was  left  to  them  save  to  burn  his  books.  Describing  modern  marriage 
in  his  Fable  of  the  Bees  (1714,  p.  64),  and  what  that  marriage  might 
legally  cover,  Mandeville  wrote:  "The  fine  gentleman  I  spoke  of  need 
not  practice  any  greater  self-denial  than  the  savage,  and  the  latter  acted 
more  according  to  the  laws  of  nature  and  sincerity  than  the  first.  The 
man  that  gratifies  his  appetite  after  the  manner  the  custom  of  the  coun- 


SEXUAL    MORALITY.  365 

try  allows  of,  has  no  censure  to  fear.  If  he  is  hotter  than  goats  or 
bulls,  as  soon  as  the  ceremony  is  over,  let  him  sate  and  fatigue  himself 
with  joy  and  ecstasies  of  pleasure,  raise  and  indulge  his  appetite  by 
turns,  as  extravagantly  as  his  strength  and  manhood  Avill  give  him  leave. 
He  may,  with  safety,  laugh  at  the  wise  men  that  should  reprove  him: 
all  the  women  and  above  nine  in  ten  of  the  men  are  of  his  side;  nay, 
he  has  the  liberty  of  valuing  himself  upon  the  fury  of  his  unbridled 
passions,  and  the  more  he  wallows  in  lust  and  strains  every  faculty  to 
be  abandonedly  voluptuous,  the  sooner  he  shall  have  the  good-will  and 
gain  the  affection  of  the  women,  not  the  young,  vain,  and  lascivious  only, 
but  the  prudent,  grave,  and  most  sober  matrons." 

Thus  the  charge  brought  against  our  marriage  system  from  the 
point  of  view  of  morality  is  that  it  subordinates  the  sexual  relationship 
to  considerations  of  money  and  of  lust.  That  is  precisely  the  essence  of 
prostitution. 

The  only  legitimately  moral  end  of  marriage — whether  we 
regard  it  from  the  wider  biological  standpoint  or  from  the 
narrower  standpoint  of  human  society — is  as  a  sexual  selection, 
effected  in  accordance  with  the  laws  of  sexual  selection,  and 
having  as  its  direct  object  a  united  life  of  complete  mutual  love 
and  as  its  indirect  object  the  procreation  of  the  race.  Unless 
procreation  forms  part  of  the  object  of  marriage,  society  has  noth- 
ing whatever  to  do  with  it  and  has  no  right  to  make  its  voice 
heard.  But  if  procreation  is  one  of  the  ends  of  marriage,  then 
it  is  imperative  from  the  biological  and  social  points  of  view  that 
no  influences  outside  the  proper  natural  influence  of  sexual 
selection  should  be  permitted  to  affect  the  choice  of  conjugal 
partners,  for  in  so  far  as  wholesome  sexual  selection  is  interfered 
with  the  offspring  is  likely  to  be  injured  and  the  interests  of  the 
race  affected. 

It  must,  of  course,  be  clearly  understood  that  the  idea  of  marriage 
as  a  form  of  sexual  union  based  not  on  biological  but  on  economic 
considerations,  is  very  ancient,  and  is  sometimes  found  in  societies  that 
are  almost  primitive.  Whenever,  however,  marriage  on  a  purely  prop- 
erty basis,  and  without  due  regard  to  sexual  selection,  has  occurred 
among  comparatively  primitive  and  vigorous  peoples,  it  has  been  largely 
deprived  of  its  evil  results  by  the  recognition  of  its  merely  economic 
character,  and  by  the  absence  of  any  desire  to  suppress,  even  nominally, 
other  sexual  relationships  on  a  more  natural  basis  which  were  outside 
this  artificial  form  of  marriage.     Polygamy  especially  tended  to  con- 


36C>  TSYOHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

ciliate  unions  on  an  economic  basis  with  unions  on  a  natural  sexual 
basis.  Our  modern  marriage  system  has,  however,  acquired  an  artificial 
rigidity  which  excludes  the  possibility  of  this  natural  safeguard  and 
compensation.  Whatever  its  real  moral  content  may  be,  a  modern  mar- 
riage is  always  "legal"  and  "sacred."  We  are  indeed  so  accustomed  to 
economic  forms  of  marriage  that,  as  Sidgwick  truly  observed  (Method 
of  Ethics,  Bk.  ii,  Ch.  XI),  when  they  are  spoken  of  as  "legalized  prostitu- 
tion" it  constantly  happens  that  "the  phrase  is  felt  to  be  extravagant 
and  paradoxical." 

A  man  who  marries  for  money  or  for  ambition  is  departing 
from  the  biological  and  moral  ends  of  marriage.  A  woman  who 
sells  herself  for  life  is  morally  on  the  same  level  as  one  who  sells 
herself  for  a  night.  The  fact  that  the  payment  seems  larger, 
that  in  return  for  rendering  certain  domestic  services  and  cer- 
tain personal  complacencies — services  and  complacencies  in  which 
she  may  be  quite  inexpert — she  will  secure  an  almshouse  in  which 
she  will  be  fed  and  clothed  and  sheltered  for  life  makes  no  differ- 
ence in  the  moral  aspect  of  her  case.  The  moral  responsibility  is, 
it  need  scarcely  be  said,  at  least  as  much  the  man's  as  the 
woman's.  It  is  largely  due  to  the  ignorance  and  even  the 
indifference  of  men,  who  often  know  little  or  nothing  of  the 
nature  of  women  and  the  art  of  love.  The  unintelligence  with 
which  even  men  who  might,  one  thinks,  be  not  without  experi- 
ence, select  as  a  mate,  a  woman  who,  however  fine  and  charming 
she  may  be,  possesses  none  of  the  qualities  which  her  wooer  really 
craves,  is  a  perpetual  marvel.  To  refrain  from  testing  and 
proving  the  temper  and  quality  of  the  woman  he  desires  for  a 
mate  is  no  doubt  an  amiable  trait  of  humility  on  a  man's  part. 
But  it  is  certain  that  a  man  should  never  be  content  with  less  than 
the  best  of  what  a  woman's  soul  and  body  have  to  give,  however 
unworthy  he  may  feel  himself  of  such  a  possession.  This 
demand,  it  must  be  remarked,  is  in  the  highest  interests  of  the 
woman  herself.  A  woman  can  offer  to  a  man  what  is  a  part  at 
all  events  of  the  secret  of  the  universe.  The  woman  degrades 
herself  who  sinks  to  the  level  of  a  candidate  for  an  asylum  for  the 
destitute. 

Our  discussion  of  the  psychic  facts  of  sex  has  thus,  it  will 
be  seen,  brought  us  up  to  the  question  of  morality.     Over  and 


SEXUAL    MORALITY.  367 

over  again,  in  setting  forth  the  phenomena  of  prostitution,  it  has 
been  necessary  to  use  the  word  "moral."  That  word,  however, 
is  vague  and  even,  it  may  be,  misleading  because  it  has  several 
senses.  So  far,  it  has  been  left  to  the  intelligent  reader,  as  he 
will  not  fail  to  perceive,  to  decide  from  the  context  in  what 
sense  the  word  was  used.  But  at  the  present  point,  before  we 
proceed  to  discuss  sexual  psychology  in  relation  to  marriage,  it 
is  necessary,  in  order  to  avoid  ambiguity,  to  remind  the  reader 
what  precisely  are  the  chief  main  senses  in  which  the  word 
"morality"  is  commonly  used. 

The  morality  with  which  ethical  treatises  are  concerned  is 
theoretical  morality.  It  is  concerned  with  what  people  "ought" 
— or  what  is  "right"  for  them — to  do.  Socrates  in  the  Platonic 
dialogues  was  concerned  with  such  theoretical  morality:  what 
"ought"  people  to  seek  in  their  actions?  The  great  bulk  of 
ethical  literature,  until  recent  times  one  may  say  the  whole  of  it, 
is  concerned  with  that  question.  Such  theoretical  morality  is, 
as  Sidgwick  said,  a  study  rather  than  a  science,  for  science  can 
only  be  based  on  what  is,  not  on  what  ought  to  be. 

Even  within  the  sphere  of  theoretical  morality  there  are  two 
very  different  kinds  of  morality,  so  different  indeed  that  some- 
times each  regards  the  other  as  even  inimical  or  at  best  only  by 
courtesy,  with  yet  a  shade  of  contempt,  "moral."  These  two 
kinds  of  theoretical  morality  are  traditional  morality  and  ideal 
morality.  Traditional  morality  is  founded  on  the  long  estab- 
lished practices  of  a  community  and  possesses  the  stability  of  all 
theoretical  ideas  based  in  the  past  social  life  and  surrounding 
every  individual  born  into  the  community  from  his  earliest  years. 
It  becomes  the  voice  of  conscience  which  speaks  automatically  in 
favor  of  all  the  rules  that  are  thus  firmly  fixed,  even  when  the 
individual  himself  no  longer  accepts  them.  Many  persons,  for 
example,  who  were  brought  up  in  childhood  to  the  Puritanical 
observance  of  Sunday,  will  recall  how,  long  after  they  had 
ceased  to  believe  that  such  observances  were  "right,"  they  yet 
in  the  violation  of  them  heard  the  protest  of  the  automatically 
aroused  voice  of  "conscience,"  that  is  to  say  the  expression 
within  the  individual  of  customary  rules  which  have  indeed  now 


368  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

ceased  to  be  his  own  but  were  those  of  the  community  in  which  he 
was  brought  up. 

Ideal  morality,  on  the  other  hand,  refers  not  to  the  past  of 
the  community  but  to  its  future.  It  is  based  not  on  the  old 
social  actions  that  are  becoming  antiquated,  and  perhaps  even 
anti-social  in  their  tendency,  but  on  new  social  actions  that  are 
as  yet  only  practiced  by  a  small  though  growing  minority  of  the 
community.  Nietzsche  in  modern  times  has  been  a  conspicuous 
champion  of  ideal  morality,  the  heroic  morality  of  the  pioneer, 
of  the  individual  of  the  coming  community,  against  traditional 
morality,  or,  as  he  called  it,  herd-morality,  the  morality  of  the 
crowd.  These  two  moralities  are  necessarily  opposed  to  each 
other,  but,  we  have  to  remember,  they  are  both  equally  sound 
and  equally  indispensable,  not  only  to  those  who  accept  them  but 
to  the  community  which  they  both  contribute  to  hold  in  vital 
theoretical  balance.  We  have  seen  them  both,  for  instance, 
applied  to  the  question  of  prostitution;  traditional  morality 
defends  prostitution,  not  for  its  own  sake,  but  for  the  sake  of 
the  marriage  system  which  it  regards  as  sufficiently  precious  to  be 
worth  a  sacrifice,  while  ideal  morality  refuses  to  accept  the  neces- 
sity of  prostitution,  and  looks  forward  to  progressive  changes  in 
the  marriage  system  which  will  modify  and  diminish  prostitution. 

But  altogether  outside  theoretical  morality,  or  the  question 
of  what  people  "ought"  to  do,  there  remains  practical  morality, 
or  the  question  of  what,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  people  actually  do. 
This  is  the  really  fundamental  and  essential  morality.  Latin 
mores  and  Greek  ^0os  both  refer  to  custom,  to  the  things  that 
are,  and  not  to  the  things  that  "ought  to  be,  except  in  the 
indirect  and  secondary  sense  that  whatever  the  members  of  the 
community,  in  the  mass,  actually  do,  is  the  thing  that  they  feel 
they  ought  to  do.  In  the  first  place,  however,  a  moral  act  was 
not  done  because  it  was  felt  that  it  ought  to  be  done,  but  for 
reasons  of  a  much  deeper  and  more  instinctive  character.1     It 


i  Such  reasons  are  connected  with  communal  welfare.  "All  immoral 
acts  result  in  communal  unhappiness,  all  moral  acts  in  communal  happi- 
ness," as  Prof.  A.  Mathews  remarks,  "Science  and  Morality,"  Popular 
Science  Monthly,  March,  1909. 


SEXUAL    MORALITY.  369 

was  not  first  done  because  it  was  felt  it  ought  to  be  done,  but  it 
was  felt  it  "ought"  to  be  done  because  it  had  actually  become  the 
custom  to  do  it. 

The  actions  of  a  community  are  determined  by  the  vital 
needs  of  a  community  under  the  special  circumstances  of  its 
culture,  time,  and  land.  When  it  is  the  general  custom  for  chil- 
dren to  kill  their  aged  parents  that  custom  is  always  found  to  be 
the  best  not  only  for  the  community  but  even  for  the  old  people 
themselves,  who  desire  it;  the  action  is  both  practically  moral 
and  theoretically  moral.1  And  when,  as  among  ourselves,  the 
aged  are  kept  alive,  that  action  is  also  both  practically  and 
theoretically  moral ;  it  is  in  no  wise  dependent  on  any  law  or  rule 
opposed  to  the  taking  of  life,  for  we  glory  in  the  taking  of  life 
under  the  patriotic  name  of  "war/'  and  are  fairly  indifferent 
to  it  when  involved  by  the  demands  of  our  industrial  system; 
but  the  killing  of  the  aged  no  longer  subserves  any  social  need 
and  their  preservation  ministers  to  our  civilized  emotional  needs. 
The  killing  of  a  man  is  indeed  notoriously  an  act  which  differs 
widely  in  its  moral  value  at  different  periods  and  in  different 
countries.  It  was  quite  moral  in  England  two  centuries  ago  and 
less,  to  kill  a  man  for  trifling  offences  against  property,  for  such 
punishment  commended  itself  as  desirable  to  the  general  sense  of 
the  educated  community.  To-day  it  would  be  regarded  as  highly 
immoral.  We  are  even  yet  only  beginning  to  doubt  the  morality 
of  condemning  to  death  and  imprisoning  for  life  an  unmarried 
girl  who  destroyed  her  infant  at  birth,  solely  actuated,  against  all 
her  natural  impulses,  by  the  primitive  instinct  of  self-defense. 
It  cannot  be  said  that  we  have  yet  begun  to  doubt  the  morality 
of  killing  men  in  war,  though  we  no  longer  approve  of  killing 
women  and  children,  or  even  non-combatants  generally.  Every 
age  or  land  has  its  own  morality. 

"Custom,  in  the  strict  sense  of  the  word,"  well  says  Wester- 

marck,  "involves  a  moral  rule Society  is  the  school 

in  which  men  learn  to  distinguish  between  right  and  wrong. 


1  See  Westermarck,  Origin  and  Development  of  the  Moral  Ideas, 
vol.  i,  pp.  386-390,  522. 

24 


370  PSYCHOLOGY  OF   SEX. 

The  headmaster  is  custom."1  Custom  is  not  only  the  basis  of 
morality  but  also  of  law.  "Custom  is  law/'2  The  field  of  theo- 
retical morality  has  been  found  so  fascinating  a  playground  for 
clever  philosophers  that  there  has  sometimes  been  a  danger  of 
forgetting  that,  after  all,  it  is  not  theoretical  morality  but  prac- 
tical morality,  the  question  of  what  men  in  the  mass  of  a  com- 
munity actually  do,  which  constitutes  the  real  stuff  of  morals.3 
If  we  define  more  precisely  what  we  mean  by  morals,  on  the 
practical  side,  we  may  say  that  it  is  constituted  by  those  customs 
which  the  great  majority  of  the  members  of  a  community 
regard  as  conducive  to  the  welfare  of  the  community  at  some 
particular  time  and  place.  It  is  for  this  reason — i.e.,  because  it  is 
a  question  of  what  is  and  not  of  merely  what  some  think  ought 
to  be — that  practical  morals  form  the  proper  subject  of  science. 
"If  the  word  'ethics'  is  to  be  used  as  the  name  for  a  science," 
Westermarck  says,  "the  object  of  that  science  can  only  be  to 
study  the  moral  consciousness  as  a  fact."4 

Lecky's  History  of  European  Morals  is  a  study  in  practical  rather 
than  in  theoretical  morals.  Dr.  Westerniarck's  great  work,  The  Origin 
and  Development  of  the  Moral  Ideas,  is  a  more  modern  example  of  the 
objectively  scientific  discussion  of  morals,  although  this  is  not  perhaps 
clearly  brought  out  by  the  title.  It  is  essentially  a  description  of  the 
actual  historical  facts  of  what  has  been,  and  not  of  what  "ought"  to  be. 
Mr.  L.  T.  Hobhouse's  Morals  in  Evolution,  published  almost  at  the  same 
time,  is  similarly  a  work  which,  while  professedly  dealing  with  ideas, 


1  Westermarck,  Origin  and  Development  of  the  Moral  Ideas,  pp,  9, 
159;  also  the  whole  of  Ch.  VII.  Actions  that  are  in  accordance  with 
custom  call  forth  public  approval,  actions  that  are  opposed  to  custom 
call  forth  public  resentment,  and  Westermarck  powerfully  argues  that 
such  approval  and  such  resentment  are  the  foundation  of  moral  judg- 
ments. 

2  This  is  well  recognized  by  legal  writers  ( e.  g.,  E.  A.  Schroeder,  Das 
Recht  in  der  Geschlechtlichen  Ordnung,  p.  5 ) . 

3  W.  G.  Sumner  (Folkways,  p.  418)  even  considers  it  desirable  to 
change  the  form  of  the  word  in  order  to  emphasize  the  real  and  funda- 
mental meaning  of  morals,  and  proposes  the  word  mores  to  indicate 
"popular  usages  and  traditions  conducive  to  societal  reform."  "  'Im- 
moral,' "  he  points  out,  "never  means  anything  but  contrary  to  the  mores 
of  the  time  and  place."  There  is,  however,  no  need  whatever  to  abojish 
or  to  supplement  the  good  old  ancient  word  "morality,"  so  long  as  we 
clearly  realize  that,  on  the  practical  side,  it  means  essentially  custom. 

4  Westermarck,  op.  cit.,  vol.  i,  p.  19. 


SEXUAL    MORALITY.  371 

i.e.,  with  rules  and  regulations,  and  indeed  disclaiming  the  task  of  being 
"the  history  of  conduct,"  yet  limits  itself  to  those  rules  which  are  "in 
fact,  the  normal  conduct  of  the  average  man"  ( vol.  i,  p.  26 ) .  In  other 
words,  it  is  essentially  a  history  of  practical  morality,  and  not  of 
theoretical  morality.  One  of  the  most  subtle  and  suggestive  of  living 
thinkers,  M.  Jules  de  Gaultier,  in  several  of  his  books,  and  notably  in 
La  D&pendance  de  la  Morale  et  I'lndependance  des  Mozurs  (1907),  has 
analyzed  the  conception  of  morals  in  a  somewhat  similar  sense.  "Phe- 
nomena relative  to  conduct,"  as  he  puts  it  {op.  tit.,  p.  58),  "are  given 
in  experience  like  other  phenomena,  so  that  morality,  or  the  totality  of 
the  laws  which  at  any  given  moment  of  historic  evolution  are  applied 
to  human  practice,  is  dependent  on  customs."  I  may  also  refer  to  the 
masterly  exposition  of  this  aspect  of  morality  in  Levy-Bruhl's  La  Morale 
et  la  Science  des  Moeurs  (there  is  an  English  translation). 

Practical  morality  is  thus  the  solid  natural  fact  which  forms 
the  biological  basis  of  theoretical  morality,  whether  traditional  or 
ideal.  The  excessive  fear,  so  widespread  among  us,  lest  we  should 
injure  morality  is  misplaced.  We  cannot  hurt  morals  though 
we  can  hurt  ourselves.  Morals  is  based  on  nature  and  can  at  the 
most  only  be  modified.  As  Crawley  rightly  insists,1  even  the 
categorical  imperatives  of  our  moral  traditions,  so  far  from  being, 
as  is  often  popularly  supposed,  attempts  to  suppress  Nature,  arise 
in  the  desire  to  assist  Nature ;  they  are  simply  an  attempt  at  the 
rigid  formulation  of  natural  impulses.  The  evil  of  them  only 
lies  in  the  fact  that,  like  all  things  that  become  rigid  and  dead, 
they  tend  to  persist  beyond  the  period  when  they  were  a  beneficial 
vital  reaction  to  the  environment.  They  thus  provoke  new  forms 
of  ideal  morality ;  and  practical  morals  develops  new  structures, 
in  accordance  with  new  vital  relationships,  to  replace  older  and 
desiccated  traditions. 

There  is  clearly  an  intimate  relationship  between  theoretical 
morals  and  practical  morals  or  morality  proper.  For  not  only 
is  theoretical  morality  the  outcome  in  consciousness  of  realized 


1  See,  e.g.,  "Exogamy  and  the  Mating  of  Cousins,"  in  Essays  Pre- 
sented to  E.  B.  Tylor,  1907,  p.  53.  "In  many  departments  of  primitive 
life  we  find  a  naive  desire  to,  as  it  were,  assist  Nature,  to  affirm  what 
is  normal,  and  later  to  confirm  it  by  the  categorical  imperative  of  custom 
and  law.  This  tendency  still  flourishes  in  our  civilized  communities, 
and,  as  the  worship  of  the  normal,  is  often  a  deadly  foe  to  the  abnormal 
and  eccentric,  and  too  often  paralyzes  originality." 


372  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   SEX. 

practices  embodied  in  the  general  life  of  the  community,  but, 
having  thus  become  conscious,  it  reacts  on  those  practices  and 
tends  to  support  them  or,  by  its  own  spontaneous  growth,  to 
modify  them.  This  action  is  diverse,  according  as  we  are  dealing 
with  one  or  the  other  of  the  strongly  marked  divisions  of  theo- 
retical morality :  traditional  and  posterior  morality,  retarding  the 
vital  growth  of  moral  practice,  or  ideal  and  anterior  morality, 
stimulating  the  vital  growth  of  moral  practice.  Practical 
morality,  or  morals  proper,  may  be  said  to  stand  between  these 
two  divisions  of  theoretical  morality.  Practice  is  perpetually 
following  after  anterior  theoretical  morality,  in  so  far  of  course 
as  ideal  morality  really  is  anterior  and  not,  as  so  often  happens, 
astray  up  a  blind  alley.  Posterior  or  traditional  morality  always 
follows  after  practice.  The  result  is  that  while  the  actual 
morality,  in  practice  at  any  time  or  place,  is  always  closely  related 
to  theoretical  morality,  it  can  never  exactly  correspond  to  either 
of  its  forms.  It  always  fails  to  catch  up  with  ideal  morality; 
it  is  always  outgrowing  traditional  morality. 

It  has  been  necessary  at  this. point  to  formulate  definitely 
the  three  chief  forms  in  which  the  word  "moral"  is  used, 
although  under  one  shape  or  another  they  cannot  but  be  familiar 
to  the  reader.  In  the  discussion  of  prostitution  it  has  indeed 
been  easily  possible  to  follow  the  usual  custom  of  allowing  the 
special  sense  in  which  the  word  was  used  to  be  determined  by  the 
context.  But  now,  when  we  are,  for  the  moment,  directly  con- 
cerned with  the  specific  question  of  the  evolution  of  sexual 
morality,  it  is  necessary  to  be  more  precise  in  formulating  the 
terms  we  use.  In  this  chapter,  except  when  it  is  otherwise  stated, 
we  are  concerned  primarily  with  morals  proper,  with  actual  con- 
duct as  it  develops  among  the  masses  of  a  community,  and  only 
secondarily  with  anterior  morality  or  with  posterior  morality. 

Sexual  morality,  like  all  other  kinds  of  morality,  is  neces- 
sarily constituted  by  inherited  traditions  modified  by  new  adap- 
tations to  the  changing  social  environment.  If  the  influence  of 
tradition  becomes  unduly  pronounced  the  moral  life  tends  to 
decay  and  lose  its  vital  adaptability.  If  adaptability  becomes  too 
facile  the  moral  life  tends  to  become  unstable  and  to  lose 


SEXUAL    MORALITY.  373 

authority.  It  is  only  by  a  reasonable  synthesis  of  structure  and 
function — of  what  is  called  the  traditional  with  what  is  called 
the  ideal — that  the  moral  life  can  retain  its  authority  without 
losing  its  reality.  Many,  even  among  those  who  call  themselves 
moralists,  have  found  this  hard  to  understand.  In  a  vain  desire 
for  an  impossible  logicality  they  have  over-emphasized  either  the 
ideal  influence  on  practical  morals  or,  still  more  frequently,  the 
traditional  influence,  which  has  appealed  to  them  because  of  the 
impressive  authority  its  dicta  seem  to  convey.  The  results  in  the 
sphere  we  are  here  concerned  with  have  often  been  unfortunate, 
for  no  social  impulse  is  so  rebellious  to  decayed  traditions,  so 
voleanically  eruptive,  as  that  of  sex. 

We  are  accustomed  to  identify  our  present  marriage  system 
with  "morality"  in  the  abstract,  and  for  many  people,  perhaps 
for  most,  it  is  difficult  to  realize  that  the  slow  and  insensible 
movement  which  is  always  affecting  social  life  at  the  present  time, 
as  at  every  other  time,  is  profoundly  affecting  our  sexual  morality. 
A  transference  of  values  is  constantly  taking  place;  what  was 
once  the  very  standard  of  morality  becomes  immoral,  what  was 
once  without  question  immoral  becomes  a  new  standard.  Such  a 
process  is  almost  as  bewildering  as  for  the  European  world  two 
thousand  years  ago  was  the  great  struggle  between  the  Eoman 
city  and  the  Christian  Church,  when  it  became  necessary  to 
realize  that  what  Marcus  Aurelius,  the  great  pattern  of  morality, 
had  sought  to  crush  as  without  question  immoral,1  was  becoming 
regarded  as  the  supreme  standard  of  morality.  The  classic 
world  considered  love  and  pity  and  self-sacrifice  as  little  better 
than  weakness  and  sometimes  worse;  the  Christian  world  not 
only  regarded  them  as  moralities  but  incarnated  them  in  a  god. 
Our  sexual  morality  has  likewise  disregarded  natural  human 
emotions,  and  is  incapable  of  understanding  those  who  declare 
that  to  retain  unduly  traditional  laws  that  are  opposed  to  the 
vital  needs  of  human  societies  is  not  a  morality  but  an  immorality. 


i  The  spirit  of  Christianity,  as  illustrated  by  Paulinus,  in  his 
Epistle  XXV,  was  from  the  Roman  point  of  view,  as  Dill  remarks 
{Roman  Society,  p.  11),  "a  renunciation,  not  only  of  citizenship,  but  of 
all  the  hard-won  fruits  of  civilization  and  social  life." 


374  PSYCHOLOGY    OF   SEX. 

The  reason  why  the  gradual  evolution  of  moral  ideals,  which 
is  always  taking  place,  tends  in  the  sexual  sphere,  at  all  events 
among  ourselves,  to  reach  a  stage  in  which  there  seems  to  be  an 
opposition  between  different  standards  lies  in  the  fact  that  as  yet 
we  really  have  no  specific  sexual  morality  at  all.1  That  may 
seem  surprising  at  first  to  one  who  reflects  on  the  immense  weight 
which  is  usually  attached  to  "sexual  morality."  And  it  is 
undoubtedly  true  that  we  have  a  morality  which  we  apply  to  the 
sphere  of  sex.  But  that  morality  is  one  which  belongs  mainly  to 
the  sphere  of  property  and  was  very  largely  developed  on  a 
property  basis.  All  the  historians  of  morals  in  general,  and  of 
marriage  in  particular,  have  set  forth  this  fact,  and  illustrated 
it  with  a  wealth  of  historical  material.  "VVe  have  as  yet  no  gen- 
erally recognized  sexual  morality  which  has  been  based  on  the 
specific  sexual  facts  of  life.  That  becomes  clear  at  once  when  we 
realize  the  central  fact  that  the  sexual  relationship  is  based  on 
love,  at  the  very  least  on  sexual  desire,  and  that  that  basis  is  so 
deep  as  to  be  even  physiological,  for  in  the  absence  of  such  sexual 
desire  it  is  physiologically  impossible  for  a  man  to  effect  inter- 
course with  a  woman.  Any  specific  sexual  morality  must  be 
based  on  that  fact.  But  our  so-called  "sexual  morality,"  so  far 
from  being  based  on  that  fact,  attempts  to  ignore  it  altogether. 
It  makes  contracts,  it  arranges  sexual  relationships  beforehand, 
it  offers  to  guarantee  permanency  of  sexual  inclinations.  It 
introduces,  that  is,  considerations  of  a  kind  that  is  perfectly 
sound  in  the  economic  sphere  to  which  such  considerations  rightly 
belong,  but  ridiculously  incongruous  in  the  sphere  of  sex  to  which 
they  have  solemnly  been  applied.  The  economic  relationships  of 
life,  in  the  large  sense,  are,  as  we  shall  see,  extremely  important  in 
the  evolution  of  any  sound  sexual  morality,  but  they  belong  to  the 
conditions  of  its  development  and  do  not  constitute  its  basis.2 

1  It  thus  happens  that,  as  Leeky  said  in  his  History  of  European 
Morals,  "of  all  the  departments  of  ethics  the  questions  concerning  the 
relations  of  the  sexes  and  the  proper  position  of  woman  are  those  upon 
the  future  of  which  there  rests  the  greatest  uncertainty."  Some  prog- 
ress has  perhaps  been  made  since  these  words  were  written,  but  they  still 
hold  true  for  the  majority  of  people. 

2  Concerning  economic  marriage  as  a  vestigial  survival,  see,  e.g., 
Bloch,  The  Sexual  Life  of  Our  Time,  p.  212. 


SEXUAL    MORALITY.  375 

The  fact  that,  from  the  legal  point  of  view,  marriage  is  primarily 
an  arrangement  for  securing  the  rights  of  property  and  inheritance  is 
well  illustrated  by  the  English  divorce  law  to-day.  According  to  this 
law,  if  a  woman  has  sexual  intercourse  with  any  man  beside  her  husband, 
he  is  entitled  to  divorce  her;  if,  however,  the  husband  has  intercourse 
with  another  woman  beside  his  wife,  she  is  not  entitled  to  a  divorce; 
that  is  only  accorded  if,  in  addition,  he  has  also  been  cruel  to  her,  or 
deserted  her,  and  from  any  standpoint  of  ideal  morality  such  a  law  is 
obviously  unjust,  and  it  has  now  been  discarded  in  nearly  all  civilized 
lands  except  England. 

But  from  the  standpoint  of  property  and  inheritance  it  is  quite 
intelligible,  and  on  that  ground  it  is  still  supported  by  the  majority  of 
Englishmen.  If  the  wife  has  intercourse  with  other  men  there  is  a  risk 
that  the  husband's  property  will  be  inherited  by  a  child  who  is  not  his 
own.  But  the  sexual  intercourse  of  the  husband  with  other  women  is 
followed  by  no  such  risk.  The  infidelity  of  the  wife  is  a  serious  offence 
against  property;  the  infidelity  of  the  husband  is  no  offence  against 
property,  and  cannot  possibly,  therefore,  be  regarded  as  a  ground  for 
divorce  from  our  legal  point  of  view.  The  fact  that  his  adultery  com- 
plicated by  cruelty  is  such  a  ground,  is  simply  a  concession  to  modern 
feeling.  Yet,  as  Helene  Stocker  truly  points  out  ( "Verschiedenheit  im 
Liebesleben  des  Weibes  und  des  Mannes,"  Zeitschrift  fur  Sexualwissen- 
schaft,  Dec,  1908),  a  married  man  who  has  an  unacknowledged  child 
with  a  woman  outside  of  marriage,  has  committed  an  act  as  seriously 
anti-social  as  a  married  woman  who  has  a  child  without  acknowledging 
that  the  father  is  not  her  husband.  In  the  first  case,  the  husband,  and 
in  the  second  case,  the  wife,  have  placed  an  undue  amount  of  respon- 
sibility on  another  person.  (The  same  point  is  brought  forward  by  the 
author  of  The  Question  of  English  Divorce,  p.  56.) 

I  insist  here  on  the  economic  element  in  our  sexual  morality, 
because  that  is  the  element  which  has  given  it  a  kind  of  stability  and 
become  established  in  law.  But  if  we  take  a  wider  view  of  our  sexual 
morality,  we  cannot  ignore  the  ancient  element  of  asceticism,  which  has 
given  religious  passion  and  sanction  to  it.  Our  sexual  morality  is  thus, 
in  reality,  a  bastard  born  of  the  union  of  property-morality  with  primi- 
tive ascetic  morality,  neither  in  true  relationship  to  the  vital  facts  of 
the  sexual  life.  It  is,  indeed,  the  property  element  which,  with  a  few 
inconsistencies,  has  become  finally  the  main  concern  of  our  law,  but  the 
ascetic  element  (with,  in  the  past,  a  wavering  relationship  to  law)  has 
had  an  important  part  in  moulding  popular  sentiment  and  in  creating 
an  attitude  of  reprobation  towards  sexual  intercourse  per  se,  although 
such  intercourse  is  regarded  as  an  essential  part  of  the  property-based 
and  religiously  sanctified  institution  of  legal  marriage. 

The  glorification  of  virginity  led  by  imperceptible  stages  to  the 


376  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   SEX. 

formulation  of  "fornication"  as  a  deadly  sin,  and  finally  as  an  actual 
secular  "crime."  It  is  sometimes  stated  that  it  was  not  until  the 
Council  of  Trent  that  the  Church  formally  anathematized  those  who 
held  that  the  state  of  marriage  was  higher  than  that  of  virginity,  but 
the  opinion  had  been  more  or  less  formally  held  from  almost  the  earliest 
ages  of  Christianity,  and  is  clear  in  the  epistles  of  Paul.  All  the 
theologians  agree  that  fornication  is  a  mortal  sin.  Caramuel,  indeed, 
the  distinguished  Spanish  theologian,  who  made  unusual  concessions  to 
the  demands  of  reason  and  nature,  held  that  fornication  is  only  evil 
because  it  is  forbidden,  but  Innocent  XI  formally  condemned  that 
proposition.  Fornication  as  a  mortal  sin  became  gradually  secularized 
into  fornication  as  a  crime.  Fornication  was  a  crime  in  France  even  as 
late  as  the  eighteenth  century,  as  Tarde  found  in  his  historical  investiga- 
tions of  criminal  procedure  in  Perigord;  adultery  was  also  a  crime  and 
severely  punished  quite  independently  of  any  complaint  from  either  of 
the  parties  (Tarde,  "Archeologie  Criminelle  en  Perigord,"  Archives  de 
I' Anthropologic  Criminelle,  Nov.  15,  1898). 

The  Puritans  of  the  Commonwealth  days  in  England  (like  the 
Puritans  of  Geneva)  followed  the  Catholic  example  and  adopted  ecclesi- 
astical offences  against  chastity  into  the  secular  law.  By  an  Act  passed 
in  1653  fornication  became  punishable  by  three  months'  imprisonment 
inflicted  on  both  parties.  By  the  same  Act  the  adultery  of  a  wife  (noth- 
ing is  said  of  a  husband)  was  made  felony,  both  for  her  and  her  partner 
in  guilt,  and  therefore  punishable  by  death  (Scobell,  Acts  and  Or- 
dinances, p.  121). 

The  action  of  a  pseudo-morality,  such  as  our  sexual  morality 
has  been,  is  double-edged.  On  the  one  side  it  induces  a  secret 
and  shame-faced  laxity,  on  the  other  it  upholds  a  rigid  and 
uninspiring  theoretical  code  which  so  few  can  consistently  follow 
that  theoretical  morality  is  thereby  degraded  into  a  more  or  less 
empty  form.  "The  human  race  would  gain  much,"  said  the 
wise  Senancourt,  "if  virtue  were  made  less  laborious.  The  merit 
would  not  be  so  great,  but  what  is  the  use  of  an  elevation  which 
can  rarely  be  sustained  P"1  At  present,  as  a  more  recent  moralist, 
Ellen  Key,  puts  it,  we  only  have  an  immorality  which  favors  vice 
and  makes  virtue  irrealizable,  and,  as  she  exclaims  with  pardon- 
able extravagance,  to  preach  a  sounder  morality  to  the  young, 

1  Senancourt,  De  V Amour,  vol.  ii,  p.  233.  The  author  of  The  Ques- 
tic  of  English  Divorce  attributes  the  absence  of  any  widespread  feeling 
against  sexual  license  to  the  absurd  rigidity  of  the  law. 


SEXUAL    MORALITY.  377 

without  at  the  same  time  condemning  the  society  which  encour- 
ages the  prevailing  immorality,  is  "worse  than  folly,  it  is  crime." 

It  is  on  the  lines  along  which  Senaneourt  a  century  ago  and 
Ellen  Key  to-day  are  great  pioneers  that  the  new  forms  of  ante- 
rior or  ideal  theoretical  morality  are  now  moving,  in  advance, 
according  to  the  general  tendency  in  morals,  of  traditional 
morality  and  even  of  practice. 

There  is  one  great  modern  movement  of  a  definite  kind 
which  will  serve  to  show  how  clearly  sexual  morality  is  to-day 
moving  towards  a  new  standpoint.  This  is  the  changing  atti- 
tude of  the  bulk  of  the  community  towards  both  State  marriage 
and  religious  marriage,  and  the  growing  tendency  to  disallow 
State  interference  with  sexual  relationships,  apart  from  the  pro- 
duction of  children. 

There  has  no  doubt  always  been  a  tendency  among  the 
masses  of  the  population  in  Europe  to  dispense  with  the  official 
sanction  of  sexual  relationships  until  such  relationships  have 
been  well  established  and  the  hope  of  offspring  has  become 
justifiable.  This  tendency  has  been  crystallized  into  recognized 
customs  among  numberless  rural  communities  little  touched 
either  by  the  disturbing  influences  of  the  outside  world  or  the 
controlling  influences  of  theological  Christian  conceptions.  But 
at  the  present  day  this  tendency  is  not  confined  to  the  more 
primitive  and  isolated  communities  of  Europe  among  whom,  on 
the  contrary,  it  has  tended  to  die  out.  It  is  an  unquestionable 
fact,  says  Professor  Bruno  Meyer,  that  far  more  than  the  half 
of  sexual  intercourse  now  takes  place  outside  legal  marriage.1 
It  is  among  the  intelligent  classes  and  in  prosperous  and  progres- 
sive communities  that  this  movement  is  chiefly  marked.  We  see 
throughout  the  world  the  practical  common  sense  of  the  people 
shaping  itself  in  the  direction  which  has  been  pioneered  by  the 
ideal  moralists  who  invariably  precede  the  new  growth  of  prac- 
tical morality. 

The  voluntary  childless  marriages  of  to-day  have  served  to 
show  the  possibility  of  such  unions  outside  legal  marriage,  and 

i  Bruno  Meyer,  "Etwas  von  Positiver  Sexualreform,"  Sexual- 
Probleme,  Nov.,  1908. 


378  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   SEX. 

such  free  unions  are  becoming,  as  Mrs.  Parsons  points  out,  "a 
progressive  substitute  for  marriage."1  The  gradual  but  steady- 
rise  in  the  age  for  entering  on  legal  marriage  also  points  in  the 
same  direction,  though  it  indicates  not  merely  an  increase  of  free 
unions  but  an  increase  of  all  forms  of  normal  and  abnormal 
sexuality  outside  marriage.  Thus  in  England  and  Wales,  in 
1906,  only  43  per  1,000  husbands  and  146  per  1,000  wives  were 
under  age,  while  the  average  age  for  husbands  was  28.6  years  and 
for  wives  26.4  years.  For  men  the  age  has  gone  up  some  eight 
months  during  the  past  forty  years,  for  women  more  than  this. 
In  the  large  cities,  like  London,  where  the  possibilities  of  extra- 
matrimonial  relationships  are  greater,  the  age  for  legal  marriage 
is  higher  than  in  the  country. 

If  we  are  to  regard  the  age  of  legal  marriage  as,  on  the  whole,  the 
age  at  which  the  population  enters  into  sexual  unions,  it  is  undoubtedly 
too  late.  Beyer,  a  leading  German  neurologist,  finds  that  there  are  evils 
alike  in  early  and  in  late  marriage,  and  comes  to  the  conclusion  that 
in  temperate  zones  the  best  age  for  women  to  marry  is  the  twenty-first 
year,  and  for  men  the  twenty-fifth  year. 

Yet,  under  bad  economic  conditions  and  with  a  rigid  marriage  law, 
early  marriages  are  in  every  respect  disastrous.  They  are  among  the 
poor  a  sign  of  destitution.  The  very  poorest  marry  first,  and  they  do 
so  through  the  feeling  that  their  condition  cannot  be  worse.  (Dr. 
Michael  Ryan  brought  together  much  interesting  evidence  concerning  the 
causes  of  early  marriage  in  Ireland  in  his  Philosophy  of  Marriage,  1837, 
pp.  58-72).  Among  the  poor,  therefore,  early  marriage  is  always  a  mis- 
fortune. "Many  good  people,"  says  Mr.  Thomas  Holmes,  Secretary  of 
the  Howard  Association  and  missionary  at  police  courts  (in  an  inter- 
view, Daily  Chronicle,  Sept.  8,  1906),  "advise  boys  and  girls  to  get 
married  in  order  to  prevent  what  they  call  a  'disgrace.'  This  I  consider 
to  be  absolutely  wicked,  and  it  leads  to  far  greater  evils  than  it  can 
possibly  avert." 

Early  marriages  are  one  of  the  commonest  causes  both  of  prostitu- 
tion and  divorce.  They  lead  to  prostitution  in  innumerable  cases,  even 
when  no  outward  separation  takes  place.  The  fact  that  they  lead  to 
divorce  is  shown  by  the  significant  circumstance  that  in  England, 
although  only  146  per  1,000  women  are  under  twenty-one  at  marriage, 


1  Elsie  Clews  Parsons,  The  Family,  p.  35.1.  Dr.  Parsons  rightly 
thinks  such  unions  a  social  evil  when  they  check  the  development  of 
personality. 


SEXUAL    MORALITY.  379 

of  the  wives  concerned  in  divorce  cases,  280  per  1,000  were  under  twenty- 
one  at  marriage,  and  this  discrepancy  is  even  greater  than  it  appears, 
for  in  the  well-to-do  class,  which  can  alone  afford  the  luxury  of  divorce, 
the  normal  age  at  marriage  is  much  higher  than  for  the  population  gen- 
erally. Inexperience,  as  was  long  ago  pointed  out  by  Milton  (who  had 
learnt  this  lesson  to  his  cost),  leads  to  shipwreck  in  marriage.  "They 
who  have  lived  most  loosely,"  he  wrote,  "prove  most  successful  in  their 
matches,  because  their  wild  affections,  unsettling  at  will,  have  been  so 
many  divorces  to  teach  them  experience." 

Miss  Clapperton,  referring  to  the  educated  classes,  advocates  very 
early  marriage,  even  during  student  life,  which  might  then  be  to  some 
extent  carried  on  side  by  side  (Scientific  Meliorism,  Ch.  XVII).  Ellen 
Key,  also,  advocates  early  marriage.  But  she  wisely  adds  that  it 
involves  the  necessity  for  easy  divorce.  That,  indeed,  is  the  only  condi- 
tion which  can  render  early  marriage  generally  desirable.  Young  people 
— unless  they  possess  very  simple  and  inert  natures — can  neither  foretell 
the  course  of  their  own  development  and  their  own  strongest  needs,  nor 
estimate  accurately  the  nature  and  quality  of  another  personality.  A 
marriage  formed  at  an  early  age  very  speedily  ceases  to  be  a  marriage 
in  anything  but  name.  Sometimes  a  young  girl  applies  for  a  separation 
from  her  husband  even  on  the  very  day  after  marriage. 

The  more  or  less  permanent  free  unions  formed  among  us  in 
Europe  are  usually  to  be  regarded  merely  as  trial-marriages. 
That  is  to  say  they  are  a  precaution  rendered  desirable  both  by 
uncertainty  as  to  either  the  harmony  or  the  fruitfulness  of  union 
until  actual  experiment  has  been  made,  and  by  the  practical  im- 
possibility of  otherwise  rectifying  any  mistake  in  consequence  of 
the  antiquated  rigidity  of  most  European  divorce  laws.  Such  trial 
marriages  are  therefore  demanded  by  prudence  and  caution,  and 
as  foresight  increases  with  the  development  of  civilization,  and 
constantly  grows  among  us,  we  may  expect  that  there  will  be  a 
parallel  development  in  the  frequency  of  trial  marriage  and  in 
the  social  attitude  towards  such  unions.  The  only  alternative — 
that  a  radical  reform  in  European  marriage  laws  should  render 
the  divorce  of  a  legal  marriage  as  economical  and  as  con- 
venient as  the  divorce  of  a  free  marriage — cannot  yet  be  expected, 
for  law  always  lags  behind  public  opinion  and  public  practice. 

If,  however,  we  take  a  wider  historical  view,  we  find  that  we 
are  in  presence  of  a  phenomenon  which,  though  favored  by 


380  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

modern  conditions,  is  very  ancient  and  widespread,  dating,  so  far 
as  Europe  is  concerned,  from  the  time  when  the  Church  first 
sought  to  impose  ecclesiastical  marriage,  so  that  it  is  practically 
a  continuation  of  the  ancient  European  custom  of  private 
marriage. 

Trial-marriages  pass  by  imperceptible  gradations  into  the  group 
of  courtship  customs  which,  while  allowing  the  young  couple  to  spend 
the  night  together,  in  a  position  of  more  or  less  intimacy,  exclude,  as  a 
rule,  actual  sexual  intercourse.  Night-courtship  flourishes  in  stable  and 
well-knit  European  communities  not  liable  to  disorganization  by  contact 
with  strangers.  It  seems  to  be  specially  common  in  Teutonic  and  Celtic 
lands,  and  is  known  by  various  names,  as  Probendchte,  fensterln,  Kilt- 
gang,  hand-fasting,  bundling,  sitting-upy  courting  on  the  bed,  etc.  It  is 
well  known  in  Wales;  it  is  found  in  various  English  counties  as  in 
Cheshire ;  it  existed  in  eighteenth  century  Ireland  ( according  to  Richard 
Twiss's  Travels)  ;  in  New  England  it  was  known  as  tarrying;  in  Holland 
it  is  called  questing.  In  Norway,  where  it  is  called  night-running,  on 
account  of  the  long  distance  between  the  homesteads,  I  am  told  that  it 
is  generally  practiced,  though  the  clergy  preach  against  it;  the  young 
girl  puts  on  several  extra  skirts  and  goes  to  bed,  and  the  young  man 
enters  by  door  or  window  and  goes  to  bed  with  her ;  they  talk  all  night, 
and  are  not  bound  to  marry  unless  it  should  happen  that  the  girl  becomes 
pregnant. 

Rhys  and  Brynmor- Jones  (Welsh  People,  pp.  582-4)  have  an  inter- 
esting passage  on  this  night-courtship  with  numerous  references.  As 
regards  Germany  see,  e.  g.,  Rudeck,  Geschichte  der  offentlichen  Sittlich- 
Tceit,  pp.  146-154.  With  reference  to  trial-marriage  generally  many 
facts  and  references  are  given  by  M.  A.  Potter  (Sohrab  and  Rustem,  pp. 
129-137). 

The  custom  of  free  marriage  unions,  usually  rendered  legal  before 
or  after  the  birth  of  children,  seems  to  be  fairly  common  in  many,  or 
perhaps  all,  rural  parts  of  England.  The  union  is  made  legal,  if  found 
satisfactory,  even  when  there  is  no  prospect  of  children.  In  some  coun- 
ties it  is  said  to  be  almost  a  universal  practice  for  the  women  to  have 
sexual  relationships  before  legal  marriage;  sometimes  she  marries  the 
first  man  whom  she  tries;  sometimes  she  tries  several  before  finding  the 
man  who  suits  her.  Such  marriages  necessarily,  on  the  whole,  turn  out 
better  than  marriages  in  which  the  woman,  knowing  nothing  of  what 
awaits  her  and  having  no  other  experiences  for  comparison,  is  liable  to 
be  disillusioned  or  to  feel  that  she  "might  have  done  better."  Even 
when  legal  recognition  is  not  sought  until  after  the  birth  of  children,  it 
by  no  means  follows  that  any  moral  deterioration  is  involved.    Thus  in 


SEXUAL    MORALITY.  381 

some  parts  of  Staffordshire  where  it  is  the  custom  of  the  women  to 
have  a  child  before  marriage,  notwithstanding  this  "corruption,"  we  are 
told  (Burton,  City  of  the  Saints,  Appendix  IV),  the  women  are  "very 
good  neighbors,  excellent,  hard-working,  and  affectionate  wives  and 
mothers." 

"The  lower  social  classes,  especially  peasants,"  remarks  Dr.  Ehr- 
hard  ("Auch-  Ein  Wort  zur  Ehereform,"  G-eschlecht  und  Qesellschaft, 
Jahrgang  I,  Heft  10),  "know  better  than  we  that  the  marriage  bed  is 
the  foundation  of  marriage.  On  that  account  they  have  retained  the 
primitive  custom  of  trial-marriage  which,  in  the  Middle  Ages,  was  still 
practiced  even  in  the  best  circles.  It  has  the  further  advantage  that 
the  marriage  is  not  concluded  until  it  has  shown  itself  to  be  fruitful. 
Trial-marriage  assumes,  of  course,  that  virginity  is  not  valued  beyond 
its  true  worth."  With  regard  to  this  point  it  may  be  mentioned  that 
in  many  parts  of  the  world  a  woman  is  more  highly  esteemed  if  she  has 
had  intercourse  before  marriage  (see,  e.g.,  Potter,  op.  cit.,  pp.  163  et  seq.). 
While  virginity  is  one  of  the  sexual  attractions  a  woman  may  possess, 
an  attraction  that  is  based  on  a  natural  instinct  (see  "The  Evolu- 
tion of  Modesty,"  in  vol.  i  of  these  Studies),  yet  an  exaggerated  atten- 
tion to  virginity  can  only  be  regarded  as  a  sexual  perversion,  allied  to 
paidophilia,  the  sexual  attraction  to  children. 

In  very  small  coordinated  communities  the  primitive  custom  of 
trial-marriage  tends  to  decay  when  there  is  a  great  invasion  of  strangers 
who  have  not  been  brought  up  to  the  custom  ( which  seems  to  them  indis- 
tinguishable from,  the  license  of  prostitution),  and  who  fail  to  undertake 
the  obligations  which  trial-marriage  involves.  This  is  what  happened 
in  the  case  of  the  so-called  "island  custom"  of  Portland,  which  lasted 
well  on  into  the  nineteenth  century;  according  to  this  custom  a  woman 
before  marriage  lived  with  her  lover  until  pregnant  and  then  married 
him ;  she  was  always  strictly  faithful  to  him  while  living  with  him,  but 
if  no  pregnancy  occurred  the  couple  might  decide  that  they  were  not 
meant  for  each  other,  and  break  off  relations.  The  result  was  that  for 
a  long  period  of  years  no  illegitimate  children  were  born,  and  few  mar- 
riages were  childless.  But  when  the  Portland  stone  trade  was  developed, 
the  workmen  imported  from  London  took  advantage  of  the  "island  cus- 
tom," but  refused  to  fulfil  the  obligation  of  marriage  when  pregnancy 
occurred.  The  custom  consequently  fell  into  disuse  (see,  e.g.,  translator's 
note  to  Bloch's  Sexual  Life  of  Our  Time,  p.  237,  and  the  quotation  there 
given  from  Hutchins,  History  and  Antiquities  of  Dorset,  vol.  ii,  p.  820). 

It  is,  however,  by  no  means  only  in  rural  districts,  but  in  great 
cities  also  that  marriages  are  at  the  outset  free  unions.  Thus  in  Paris 
Despr§s  stated  more  than  thirty  years  ago  (La  Prostitution  a  Paris,  p. 
137)  that  in  an  average  arrondissement  nine  out  of  ten  legal  marriages 
are  the  consolidation  of  a  free  union;    though,  while  that  was  an  aver- 


382  PSYCHOLOGY   OF  SEX. 

age,  in  a  few  arrondissements  it  was  only  three  out  of  ten.  Much  the 
same  conditions  prevail  in  Paris  to-day;  at  least  half  the  marriages,  it 
is  stated,  are  of  this  kind. 

In  Teutonic  lands  the  custom  of  free  unions  is  very  ancient  and 
well-established.  Thus  in  Sweden,  Ellen  Key  states  (Liebe  und  Ehe,  p. 
123),  the  majority  of  the  population  begin  married  life  in  this  way. 
The  arrangement  is  found  to  be  beneficial,  and  •'marital  fidelity  is  as 
great  as  pre-marital  freedom  is  unbounded."  In  Denmark,  also,  a  large 
number  of  children  are  conceived  before  the  unions  of  the  parents  are 
legalized  (Rubin  and  Westergaard,  quoted  by  Gaedeken,  Archives  d'An- 
thropologie  Criminelle,  Feb.  15,  1909). 

In  Germany  not  only  is  the  proportion  of  illegitimate  births  very 
high,  since  in  Berlin  it  is  17  per  cent.,  and  in  some  towns  very  much 
higher,  but  ante-nuptial  conceptions  take  place  in  nearly  half  the  mar- 
riages, and  sometimes  in  the  majority.  Thus  in  Berlin  more  than  40 
per  cent,  of  all  legitimate  first-born  children  are  conceived  before  mar- 
riage, while  in  some  rural  provinces  ( where  the  proportion  of  illegitimate 
births  is  lower)  the  percentage  of  marriages  following  ante-nuptial  con- 
ceptions is  much  higher  than  in  Berlin.  The  conditions  in  rural  Ger- 
many have  been  especially  investigated  by  a  committee  of  Lutheran 
pastors,  and  were  set  forth  a  few  years  ago  in  two  volumes,  Die  Gesch- 
lecht-sittlich  Verhaltnisse  im  Deutschen  Reiche,  which  are  full  of 
instruction  concerning  German  sexual  morality.  In  Hanover,  it  is  said 
in  this  work,  the  majority  of  authorities  state  that  intercourse  before 
marriage  is  the  rule.  At  the  very  least,  a  probe,  or  trial,  is  regarded 
as  a  matter-of-course  preliminary  to  a  marriage,  since  no  one  wishes  "to 
buy  a  pig  in  a  poke."  In  Saxony,  likewise,  we  are  told,  it  is  seldom 
that  a  girl  fails  to  have  intercourse  before  marriage,  or  that  her  first 
child  is  not  born,  or  at  all  events  conceived,  outside  marriage.  This  is 
justified  as  a  proper  proving  of  a  bride  before  taking  her  for  good.  "One 
does  not  buy  even  a  penny  pipe  without  trying  it,"  a  German  pastor  was 
informed.  Around  Stettin,  in  twelve  districts  (nearly  half  the  whole), 
sexual  intercourse  before  marriage  is  a  recognized  custom,  and  in  the 
remainder,  if  not  exactly  a  custom,  it  is  very  common,  and  is  not  severely 
or  even  at  all  condemned  by  public  opinion.  In  some  districts  marriage 
immediately  follow^  pregnancy.  In  the  Dantzig  neighborhood,  again, 
according  to  the  Lutheran  Committee,  intercourse  before  marriage  occurs 
in  more  than  half  the  cases,  but  marriage  by  no  means  always  follows 
pregnancy.  Nearly  all  the  girls  who  go  as  servants  have  lovers,  and 
country  people  in  engaging  servants  sometimes  tell  them  that  at  evening 
and  night  they  may  do  as  they  like.  This  state  of  things  is  found  to 
be  favorable  to  conjugal  fidelity.  The  German  peasant  girl,  as  another 
authority  remarks  (E.  H.  Meyer,  Deutsche  Volkskunde,  1898,  pp.  154, 
164),  has  her  own  room;    she  may  receive  her  lover;    it  is  no  great 


SEXUAL    MORALITY.  383 

Bhame  if  she  gives  herself  to  him.  The  number  of  women  who  enter 
legal  marriage  still  virgins  is  not  large  (this  refers  more  especially  to 
Baden),  but  public  opinion  protects  them,  and  such  opinion  is  unfavor- 
able to  the  disregard  of  the  responsibilities  involved  by  sexual  relation- 
ships. The  German  woman  is  less  chaste  before  marriage  than  her 
French  or  Italian  sister.  But,  Meyer  adds,  she  is  probably  more  faithful 
after  marriage  than  they  are. 

It  is  assumed  by  many  that  this  state  of  German  morality  as  it 
exists  to-day  is  a  new  phenomenon,  and  the  sign  of  a  rapid  national 
degeneration.  That  is  by  no  means  the  case.  In  this  connection  we 
may  accept  the  evidence  of  Catholic  priests,  who,  by  the  experience  of 
the  confessional,  are  enabled  to  speak  with  authority.  An  old  Bavarian 
priest  thus  writes  (Geschlecht  und  Gesellschaft,  1907,  Bd.  ii,  Heft  1)  : 
"At  Moral  Congresses  we  hear  laudation  of  'the  good  old  times'  when 
faith  and  morality  prevailed  among  the  people.  Whether  that  is  correct 
is  another  question.  As  a  young  priest  I  heard  of  as  many  and  as 
serious  sins  as  I  now  hear  of  as  an  old  man.  The  morality  of  the  people 
is  not  greater  nor  is  it  less.  The  error  is  the  belief  that  immorality 
goes  out  of  the  towns  and  poisons  the  country.  People  talk  as  though 
the  country  were  a  pure  Paradise  of  innocence.  I  will  by  no  means  call 
our  country  people  immoral,  but  from  an  experience  of  many  years  I  can 
say  that  in  sexual  respects  there  is  no  difference  between  town  and  coun- 
try. I  have  learnt  to  know  more  than  a  hundred  different  parishes,  and 
in  the  most  various  localities,  in  the  mountain  and  in  the  plain,  on 
poor  land  and  on  rich  land.  But  everywhere  I  find  the  same  morals  and 
lack  of  morals.  There  are  everywhere  the  same  men,  though  in  the 
country  there  are  often  better  Christians  than  in  the  towns." 

If,  however,  we  go  much  farther  back  than  the  memories  of  a 
living  man  it  seems  highly  probable  that  the  sexual  customs  of  the  Ger- 
man people  of  the  present  day  are  not  substantially  different — though 
it  may  well  be  that  at  different  periods  different  circumstances  have 
accentuated  them — from  what  they  were  in  the  dawn  of  Teutonic 
history.  This  is  the  opinion  of  one  of  the  profoundest  students  of  Indo- 
Germanie  origins.  In  his  Reallexicon  (art.  "Keuschheit" )  O.  Schrader 
points  out  that  the  oft-quoted  Tacitus,  strictly  considered,  can  only  be 
taken  to  prove  that  women  were  chaste  after  marriage,  and  that  no 
prostitution  existed.  There  can  be  no  doubt,  he  adds,  and  the  earliest 
historical  evidence  shows,  that  women  in  ancient  Germany  were  not 
chaste  before  marriage.  This  fact  has  been  disguised  by  the  tendency 
of  the  old  classic  writers  to  idealize  the  Northern  peoples. 

Thus  we  have  to  realize  that  the  conception  of  "German  virtue," 
which  has  been  rendered  so  familiar  to  the  world  by  a  long  succession 
of  German  writers,  by  no  means  involves  any  special  devotion  to  the 
virtue  of  chastity.    Tacitus,  indeed,  in  the  passage  more  often  quoted  in 


384  PSYCHOLOGY    OF   SEX. 

Germany  than  any  other  passage  in  classic  literature,  while  correctly 
emphasizing  the  late  puberty  of  the  Germans  and  their  brutal  punish- 
ment of  conjugal  infidelity  on  the  part  of  the  wife,  seemed  to  imply  that 
they  were  also  chaste.  But  we  have  always  to  remark  that  Tacitus 
wrote  as  a  satirizing  moralist  as  well  as  a  historian,  and  that,  as  he 
declaimed  concerning  the  virtues  of  the  German  barbarians,  he  had  one 
eye  on  the  Roman  gallery  whose  vices  he  desired  to  lash.  Much  the 
same  perplexing  confusion  has  been  created  by  Gildas,  who,  in  describing 
the  results  of  the  Saxon  Conquest  of  Britain,  wrote  as  a  preacher  as 
well  as  a  historian,  and  the  same  moral  purpose  (as  Dill  has  pointed 
out)  distorts  Salvian's  picture  of  the  vices  of  fifth  century  Gaul.  (I 
may  add  that  some  of  the  evidence  in  favor  of  the  sexual  freedom 
involved  by  early  Teutonic  faiths  and  customs  is  brought  together  in 
the  study  of  "Sexual  Periodicity"  in  the  first  volume  of  these  Studies; 
cf.  also,  Rudeck,  QescJiichte  der  offentlichen  Sittlichkeit  in  Deutschland, 
1897,  pp.  146  et  seq.) . 

The  freedom  and  tolerance  of  Russian  sexual  customs  is  fairly 
well-known.  As  a  Russian  correspondent  writes  to  me,  "the  liberalism 
of  Russian  manners  enables  youths  and  girls  to  enjoy  complete  inde- 
pendence. They  visit  each  other  alone,  they  walk  out  alone,  and  they 
return  home  at  any  hour  they  please.  They  have  a  liberty  of  movement 
as  complete  as  that  of  grown-up  persons;  some  avail  themselves  of  it 
to  discuss  politics  and  others  to  make  love.  They  are  able  also  to  pro- 
cure any  books  they  please;  thus  on  the  table  of  a  college  girl  I  knew 
I  saw  the  Elements  of  Social  Science,  then  prohibited  in  Russia;  this 
girl  lived  with  her  aunt,  but  she  had  her  own  room,  which  only  her 
friends  were  allowed  to  enter;  her  aunt  or  other  relations  never  entered 
it.  Naturally,  she  went  out  and  came  back  at  what  hours  she  pleased. 
Many  other  college  girls  enjoy  the  same  freedom  in  their  families.  It 
is  very  different  in  Italy,  where  girls  have  no  freedom  of  movement,  and 
can  neither  go  out  alone  nor  receive  gentlemen  alone,  and  Avhere,  unlike 
Russia,  a  girl  who  has  sexual  intercourse  outside  marriage  is  really  'lost' 
and  'dishonored'"   (cf.  Sexual-Probleme,  Aug.,  1908,  p.  506). 

It  would  appear  that  freedom  of  sexual  relationships  in  Russia— 
apart  from  the  influence  of  ancient  custom — has  largely  been  rendered 
necessary  by  the  difficulty  of  divorce.  Married  couples,  who  were  unable 
to  secure  divorce,  separated  and  found  new  partners  without  legal  mar- 
riage. In  1907,  however,  an  attempt  was  made  to  remedy  this  defect  in 
the  law;  a  liberal  divorce  law  has  been  introduced,  mutual  consent  with 
separation  for  a  period  of  over  a  year  being  recognized  as  adequate 
ground  for  divorce  ( Beiblatt  to  Oeschlecht  und  Gesellschaft,  Bd.  ii,  Heft 
5,  p.  145). 

During  recent  years  there  has  developed  among  educated  young 
men  and  women  in  Russia  a  movement  of  sexual  license,  which,  though  it 


SEXUAL    MORALITY.  385 

is  doubtless  supported  by  the  old  traditions  of  sexual  freedom,  must  by 
no  means  be  confused  with  that  freedom,  since  it  is  directly  due  to 
causes  of  an  entirely  different  order.  The  strenuous  revolutionary  efforts 
made  during  the  last  years  of  the  past  century  to  attain  political  free- 
dom absorbed  the  younger  and  more  energetic  section  of  the  educated 
classes,  involved  a  high  degree  of  mental  tension,  and  were  accompanied 
by  a  tendency  to  asceticism.  The  prospect  of  death  was  constantly  before 
their  eyes,  and  any  preoccupation  with  sexual  matters  would  have  been 
felt  as  out  of  harmony  with  the  spirit  of  revolution.  But  during  the 
present  century  revolutionary  activity  has  largely  ceased.  It  has  been, 
to  a  considerable  extent,  replaced  by  a  movement  of  interest  in  sexual 
problems  and  of  indulgence  in  sexual  unrestraint,  often  taking  on  a 
somewhat  licentious  and  sensual  character.  "Free  love"  unions  have 
been  formed  by  the  students  of  both  sexes  for  the  cultivation  of  these 
tendencies.  A  novel,  Artzibascheff's  Ssanin,  has  had  great  influence  in 
promoting  these  tendencies.  It  is  not  likely  that  this  movement,  in  its 
more  extravagant  forms,  will  be  of  long  duration.  (For  some  account 
of  this  movement,  see,  e.g.,  Werner  Daya,  "Die  Sexuelle  Bewegung  in 
Russland,"  Zeitschrift  fiir  Sexualwissenschaft,  Aug.,  1908;  also,  "Les 
Associations  Erotiques  en  Russe,"  Journal  du  Droit  International  Prive, 
Jan.,  1909,  fully  summarized  in  Revue  des  Ide"es,  Feb.,  1909.) 

The  movement  cf  sexual  freedom  in  Russia  lies  much  deeper,  how- 
ever, than  this  fashion  of  sensual  license;  it  is  found  in  remote  and 
uneontaminated  parts  of  the  country,  and  is  connected  with  very  ancient 
customs. 

There  is  considerable  interest  in  realizing  the  existence  of  long- 
continued  sexual  freedom — by  some  incorrectly  termed  "immorality,"  for 
what  is  in  accordance  with  the  customs  or  mores  of  a  people  cannot  be 
immoral — among  peoples  so  virile  and  robust,  so  eminently  capable  of 
splendid  achievements,  as  the  Germans  and  the  Russians.  There  is,  how- 
ever, a  perhaps  even  greater  interest  in  tracing  the  development  of  the 
same  tendency  among  new  prosperous  and  highly  progressive  communi- 
ties who  have  either  not  inherited  the  custom  of  sexual  freedom  or  are 
now  only  reviving  it.  We  may,  for  instance,  take  the  ease  of  Australia 
and  New  Zealand.  This  development  may  not,  indeed,  be  altogether 
recent.  The  frankness  of  sexual  freedom  in  Australia  and  the  tolerance 
in  regard  to  it  were  conspicuous  thirty  years  ago  to  those  who  came  from 
England  to  live  in  the  Southern  continent,  and  were  doubtless  equally 
visible  at  an  earlier  date.  It  seems,  however,  to  have  developed  with 
the  increase  of  self-conscious  civilization.  "After  careful  inquiry,"  says 
the  Rev.  H.  Northcote,  who  has  lived  for  many  years  in  the  Southern 
hemisphere  (Christianity  and  Sex  Problems,  Ch.  VIII),  "the  writer  finds 
sufficient  evidence  that  of  recent  years  intercourse  out  of  wedlock  has 
tended  towards  an  actual  increase  in  parts  of  Australia."    Coghlani  the 


386  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   SEX. 

chief  authority  on  Australian  statistics,  states  more  precisely  in  his 
Childbirth  in  ~New  South  Wales,,  published  a  few  years  ago:  "The 
prevalence  of  births  of  ante-nuptial  conception — a  matter  hitherto  little 
understood — has  now  been  completely  investigated.  In  New  South  Wales, 
during  six  years,  there  were  13,366  marriages,  in  respect  of  which  there 
was  ante-nuptial  conception,  and,  as  the  total  number  of  marriages  was 
49,641,  at  least  twenty-seven  marriages  in  a  hundred  followed  conception. 
During  the  same  period  the  illegitimate  births  numbered  14,779;  there 
were,  therefore,  28,145  cases  of  conception  amongst  unmarried  women; 
in  13,366  instances  marriage  preceded  the  birth  of  the  child,  so  that  the 
children  were  legitimatized  in  rather  more  than  forty-seven  cases  out  of 
one  hundred.  A  study  of  the  figures  of  births  of  ante-nuptial  conception 
makes  it  obvious  that  in  a  very  large  number  of  instances  pre-marital 
intercourse  is  not  an  anticipation  of  marriage  already  arranged,  but  that 
the  marriages  are  forced  upon  the  parties,  and  would  not  be  entered  into 
were  it  not  for  the  condition  of  the  woman"  (cf.  Powys,  Biometrika,  vol. 
i,  1901-2,  p.  30).  That  marriage  should  be,  as  Coghlan  puts  it,  "forced 
upon  the  parties,"  is  not,  of  course,  desirable  in  the  general  moral  inter- 
ests, and  it  is  also  a  sign  of  imperfect  moral  responsibility  in  the  parties 
themselves. 

The  existence  of  such  a  state  of  things,  in  a  young  country  belong- 
ing to  a  part  of  the  world  where  the  general  level  of  prosperity,  intelli- 
gence, morality  and  social  responsibility  may  perhaps  be  said  to  be  higher 
than  in  any  other  region  inhabited  by  people  of  white  race,  is  a  fact  of 
the  very  first  significance  when  we  are  attempting  to  forecast  the  direc- 
tion in  which  civilized  morality  is  moving. 

It  is  sometimes  said,  or  at  least  implied,  that  in  this  move- 
ment women  are  taking  only  a  passive  part,  and  that  the  initiative 
lies  with  men  who  are  probably  animated  by  a  desire  to  escape 
the  responsibilities  of  marriage.  This  is  very  far  from  being 
the  case. 

The  active  part  taken  by  German  girls  in  sexual  matters  is  referred 
to  again  and  again  by  the  Lutheran  pastors  in  their  elaborate  and 
detailed  report.  Of  the  Dantzig  district  it  is  said  "the  young  girls  give 
themselves  to  the  youths,  or  even  seduce  them."  The  military  manoeuvres 
are  frequently  a  source  of  unchastity  in  rural  districts.  "The  fault  is 
not  merely  with  the  soldiers,  but  chiefly  with  the  girls,  who  become  half 
mad  as  soon  as  they  see  a  soldier,"  it  is  reported  from  the  Dresden  dis- 
trict. And  in  summarizing  conditions  in  East  Germany  the  report 
states :  "In  sexual  wantonness  girls  are  not  behind  the  young  men ;  they 
allow  themselves  to  be  seduced  only  too  willingly;    even  grown-up  girls 


SEXUAL    MORALITY.  387 

often  go  with  half-grown  youths,  and  girls  frequently  give  themselves  to 
several  men,  one  after  the  other.  It  is  by  no  means  always  the  youth 
who  effects  the  seduction,  it  is  very  frequently  the  girls  who  entice  the 
youth  to  sexual  intercourse;  they  do  not  always  wait  till  the  men  come 
to  their  rooms,  but  will  go  to  the  men's  rooms  and  await  them  in  their 
beds.  With  this  inclination  to  sexual  intercourse,  it  is  not  surprising 
that  many  believe  that  after  sixteen  no  girl  is  a  virgin.  Unchastity 
among  the  rural  laboring  classes  is  universal,  and  equally  pronounced  in 
both  sexes"  (op.  oit.,  vol.  i,  218). 

Among  women  of  the  educated  classes  the  conditions  are  somewhat 
different.  Restraints,  both  internal  and  external,  are  very  much  greater. 
Virginity,  at  all  events  in  its  physical  fact,  is  retained,  for  the  most  part, 
till  long  past  girlhood,  and  when  it  is  lost  that  loss  is  concealed  with 
a  scrupulous  care  and  prudence  unknown  to  the  working-classes.  Yet 
the  fundamental  tendencies  remain  the  same.  So  far  as  England  is  con- 
cerned, Geoffrey  Mortimer  quite  truly  writes  (Clwpters  on  Human  Love, 
1898,  p.  117)  that  the  two  groups  of  (1)  women  who  live  in  constant 
secret  association  with  a  single  lover,  and  (2)  women  who  give  themselves 
to  men,  without  fear,  from  the  force  of  their  passions,  are  "much  larger 
than  is  generally  supposed.  In  all  classes  of  society  there  are  women 
who  are  only  virgins  by  repute.  Many  have  borne  children  without  being 
even  suspected  of  cohabitation;  but  the  majority  adopt  methods  of  pre- 
venting conception.  A  doctor  in  a  small  provincial  town  declared  to 
me  that  such  irregular  intimacies  were  the  rule,  and  not  by  any  means 
the  exception  in  his  district."  As  regards  Germany,  a  lady  doctor,  Frau 
Adams-Lehmann,  states  in  a  volume  of  the  Transactions  of  the  German 
Society  for  Combating  Venereal  Disease  (Sexualpadagogik,  p.  271)  :  "I 
can  say  that  during  consultation  hours  I  see  very  few  virgins  over  thirty. 
These  women,"  she  adds,  "are  sensible,  courageous  and  natural,  often  the 
best  of  their  sex;  and  we  ought  to  give  them  our  moral  support.  They 
are  working  towards  a  new  age." 

It  is  frequently  stated  that  the  pronounced  tendency 
witnessed  at  the  present  time  to  dispense  as  long  as  possible  with 
the  formal  ceremony  of  binding  marriage  is  unfortunate  because 
it  places  women  in  a  disadvantageous  position.  In  so  far  as 
the  social  environment  in  which  she  lives  views  with  disapproval 
sexual  relationship  without  formal  marriage,  the  statement  is 
obviously  to  that  extent  true,  though  it  must  be  remarked,  on 
the  other  hand,  that  when  social  opinion  strongly  favors  legal 
marriage  it  acts  as  a  compelling  force  in  the  direction  of  legiti- 
mating free  unions.     But  if  the  absence  of  the  formal  marriage 


388  PSYCHOLOGY   OF    SEX. 

bond  constituted  a  real  and  intrinsic  disadvantage  to  women  in 
sexual  relations  they  would  not  show  themselves  so  increasingly 
ready  to  dispense  with  it.  And,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  those  who 
are  intimately  acquainted  with  the  facts  declare  that  the  absence 
of  formal  marriage  tends  to  give  increased  consideration  to 
women  and  is  even  favorable  to  fidelity  and  to  the  prolongation  of 
the  union.  This  seems  to  be  true  as  regards  people  of  the  most 
different  social  classes  and  even  of  different  races.  It  is  probably 
based  on  fundamental  psychological  facts,  for  the  sense  of  com- 
pulsion always  tends  to  produce  a  movement  of  exasperation  and 
revolt.  We  are  not  here  concerned  with  the  question  as  to  how 
far  formal  marriage  also  is  based  on  natural  facts;  that  is  a 
question  which  will  come  up  for  discussion  at  a  later  stage. 

The  advantage  for  women  of  free  sexual  unions  over  compulsory 
marriage  is  well  recognized  in  the  case  of  the  working  classes  of  London, 
among  whom  sexual  relationships  before  marriage  are  not  unusual,  and 
are  indulgently  regarded.  It  is,  for  instance,  clearly  asserted  in  the 
monumental  work  of  C.  Booth,  Life  and  Labour  of  the  People.  "It  is 
even  said  of  rough  laborers,"  we  read,  for  instance,  in  the  final  volume 
of  this  work  (p.  41),  "that  they  behave  best  if  not  married  to  the  woman 
with  whom  they  live."  The  evidence  on  this  point  is  often  the  more 
impressive  because  brought  forward  by  people  who  are  very  far  indeed 
from  being  anxious  to  base  any  general  conclusions  on  it.  Thus  in  the 
same  volume  a  clergyman  is  quoted  as  saying:  "These  people  manage 
to  live  together  fairly  peaceably  so  long  as  they  are  not  married,  but  if 
they  marry  it  always  seems  to  lead  to  blows  and  rows." 

It  may  be  said  that  in  such  a  case  we  witness  not  so  much  the 
operation  of  a  natural  law  as  the  influences  of  a  great  centre  of  civiliza- 
tion exerting  its  moralizing  effects  even  on  those  who  stand  outside  the 
legally  recognized  institution  of  marriage.  That  contention  may,  how- 
ever, be  thrust  aside.  We  find  exactly  the  same  tendency  in  Jamaica 
where  the  population  is  largely  colored,  and  the  stress  of  a  high  civiliza- 
tion can  scarcely  be  said  to  exist.  Legal  marriage  is  here  discarded  to 
an  even  greater  extent  than  in  London,  for  little  care  is  taken  to 
legitimate  children  by  marriage.  It  was  found  by  a  committee  appointed 
to  inquire  into  the  marriage  laws  of  Jamaica,  that  three  out  of  every 
five  births  are  illegitimate,  that  is  to  say  that  legal  illegitimacy  has 
ceased  to  be  immoral,  having  become  the  recognized  custom  of  the 
majority  of  the  inhabitants.  There  is  no  social  feeling  against  illegiti- 
macy.    The  men  approve  of  the  decay  of  legal  marriage,  because  they 


SEXUAL    MORALITY.  389 

say  the  women  work  better  in  the  house  when  they  are  not  married;  the 
women  approve  of  it,  because  they  say  that  men  are  more  faithful  when 
not  bound  by  legal  marriage.  This  has  been  well  brought  out  by  W.  P. 
Livingstone  in  his  interesting  book,  Black  Jamaica  (1899).  The  people 
recognize,  he  tells  us  (p.  210),  that  "faithful  living  together  constitutes 
marriage;"  they  say  that  they  are  "married  but  not  parsoned."  One 
reason  against  legal  marriage  is  that  they  are  disinclined  to  incur  the 
expense  of  the  official  sanction.  (In  Venezuela,  it  may  be  added,  where 
also  the  majority  of  births  take  place  outside  official  marriage,  the  chief 
reason  is  stated  to  be,  not  moral  laxity,  but  the  same  disinclination  to 
pay  the  expenses  of  legal  weddings.)  Frequently  in  later  life,  some- 
times when  they  have  grown  up  sons  and  daughters,  couples  go  through 
the  official  ceremony.  (In  Abyssinia,  also,  it  is  stated  by  Hugues  Le 
Roux,  where  the  people  are  Christian  and  marriage  is  indissoluble  and 
the  ceremony  expensive,  it  is  not  usual  for  married  couples  to  make 
their  unions  legal  until  old  age  is  coming  on,  Sexual- Probleme,  April, 
1908,  p.  217.)  It  is  significant  that  this  condition  of  things  in  Jamaica, 
as  elsewhere,  is  associated  with  the  superiority  of  women.  "The  women 
of  the  peasant  class,"  remarks  Livingstone  (p.  212),  "are  still  practically 
independent  of  the  men,  and  are  frequently  their  superiors,  both  in 
physical  and  mental  capacity."  They  refuse  to  bind  themselves  to  a 
man  who  may  turn  out  to  be  good  for  nothing,  a  burden  instead  of  a 
help  and  protection.  So  long  as  the  unions  are  free  they  are  likely  to 
be  permanent.  If  made  legal,  the  risk  is  that  they  will  become  intol- 
erable, and  cease  by  one  of  the  parties  leaving  the  other.  "The  necessity 
for  mutual  kindness  and  forbearance  establishes  a  condition  that  is  the 
best  guarantee  of  permanency"  (p.  214) .  It  is  said,  however,  that  under 
the  influence  of  religious  and  social  pressure  the  people  are  becoming 
more  anxious  to  adopt  "respectable"  ideas  of  sexual  relationships,  though 
it  seems  evident,  in  view  of  Livingstone's  statement,  that  such  respecta- 
bility is  likely  to  involve  a  decrease  of  real  morality.  Livingstone  points 
out,  however,  one  serious  defect  in  the  present  conditions  which  makes 
it  easy  for  immoral  men  to  escape  paternal  responsibilities,  and  this  is 
the  absence  of  legal  provision  for  the  registration  of  the  father's  name 
on  birth  certificates  (p.  256).  In  every  country  where  the  majority  of 
births  are  illegitimate  it  is  an  obvious  social  necessity  that  the  names 
of  both  parents  should  be  duly  registered  on  all  birth  certificates.  It 
has  been  an  unpardonable  failure  on  the  part  of  the  Jamaican  Govern- 
ment to  neglect  the  simple  measure  needed  to  give  "each  child  born  in 
the  country  a  legal  father"  (p.  258). 

We  thus  see  that  we  have  to-day  reached  a  position  in  which 
— partly  owing  to  economic  causes  and  partly  to  causes  which  are 


390  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   SEX. 

more  deeply  rooted  in  the  tendencies  involved  by  civilization — 
women  are  more  often  detached  than  of  old  from  legal  sexual 
relationship  with  men  and  both  sexes  are  less  inclined  than  in 
earlier  stages  of  civilization  to  sacrifice  their  own  independence 
even  when  they  form  such  relationships.  "I  never  heard  of  a 
woman  over  sixteen  years  of  age  who,  prior  to  the  breakdown 
of  aboriginal  customs  after  the  coming  of  the  whites,  had  not  a 
husband,"  wrote  Curr  of  the  Australian  Blacks.1  Even  as 
regards  some  parts  of  Europe,  it  is  still  possible  to-day  to  make 
almost  the  same  statement.  But  in  all  the  richer,  more  energetic, 
and  progressive  countries  very  different  conditions  prevail. 
Marriage  is  late  and  a  certain  proportion  of  men,  and  a  still 
larger  proportion  of  women  (who  exceed  the  men  in  the  general 
population)  never  marry  at  all.2 

Before  we  consider  the  fateful  significance  of  this  fact  of 
the  growing  proportion  of  adult  unmarried  women  whose  sexual 
relationships  are  unrecognized  by  the  state  and  largely  unrecog- 
nized altogether,  it  may  be  well  to  glance  summarily  at  the  two 
historical  streams  of  tendency,  both  still  in  action  among  us, 
which  affect  the  status  of  women,  the  one  favoring  the  social 
equality  of  the  sexes,  the  other  favoring  the  social  subjection  of 
women.  It  is  not  difficult  to  trace  these  two  streams  both  in 
conduct  and  opinion,  in  practical  morality  and  in  theoretical 
morality. 

At  one  time  it  was  widely  held  that  in  early  states  of  society, 
before  the  establishment  of  the  patriarchal  stage  which  places 
women  under  the  protection  of  men,  a  matriarchal  stage  prevailed 
in  which  women  possessed  supreme  power.3     Bachofen,  half  a 

1  For  evidence  regarding  the  general  absence  of  celibacy  among  both 
savage  and  barbarous  peoples,  see,  e.g.,  Westermarck,  History  of  Human 
Marriage,  Ch.  VII. 

2  There  are,  for  instance,  two  millions  of  unmarried  women  in 
France,  while  in  Belgium  30  per  cent,  of  the  women,  and  in  Germany 
sometimes  even  50  per  cent,  are  unmarried. 

3  Such  a  position  would  not  be  biologically  unreasonable,  in  view 
of  the  greatly  preponderant  part  played  by  the  female  in  the  sexual 
process  which  insures  the  conservation  of  the  race.  "If  the  sexual 
instinct  is  regarded  solely  from  the  physical  side,"  says  D.  W.  H.  Busch 
(Das  Geschlechtsleoen  des  Weibes,  1839,  vol.  i,  p.  201),  "the  woman 
cannot  be  regarded  as  the  property  of  the  man,  but  with  equal  and 
greater  reason  the  man  may  be  regarded  as  the  property  of  the  woman." 


SEXUAL    MORALITY.  391 

century  ago,  was  the  great  champion  of  this  view.  He  found 
a  typical  example  of  a  matriarchal  state  among  the  ancient 
Lycians  of  Asia  Minor  with  whom,  Herodotus  stated,  the  child 
takes  the  name  of  the  mother,  and  follows  her  status,  not  that 
of  the  father.1  Such  peoples,  Bachofen  believed,  were  gynseco- 
cratic;  power  was  in  the  hands  of  women.  It  can  no  longer  be 
said  that  this  opinion,  in  the  form  held  by  Bachofen,  meets  with 
any  considerable  support.  As  to  the  wide-spread  prevalence  of 
descent  through  the  mother,  there  is  no  doubt  whatever  that  it 
has  prevailed  very  widely.  But  such  descent  through  the  mother, 
it  has  become  recognized,  by  no  means  necessarily  involves  the 
power  of  the  mother,  and  mother-descent  may  even  be  combined 
with  a  patriarchal  system.2  There  has  even  been  a  tendency  to 
run  to  the  opposite  extreme  from  Bachofen  and  to  deny  that 
mother-descent  conferred  any  special  claim  for  consideration  on 
women.  That,  however,  seems  scarcely  in  accordance  with  the 
evidence  and  even  in  the  absence  of  evidence  could  scarcely  be 
regarded  as  probable.  It  would  seem  that  we  may  fairly  take  as 
a  type  of  the  matriarchal  family  that  based  on  the  ambil  anafc 
marriage  of  Sumatra,  in  which  the  husband  lives  in  the  wife's 
family,  paying  nothing  and  occupying  a  subordinate  position. 
The  example  of  the  Lycians  is  here  in  point,  for  although,  as 
reported  by  Herodotus,  there  is  nothing  to  show  that  there  was 
anything  of  the  nature  of  a  gyngecocracy  in  Lycia,  we  know  that 
women  in  all  these  regions  of  Asia  Minor  enjoyed  high  consider- 
ation and  influence,  traces  of  which  may  be  detected  in  the 
early  literature  and  history  of  Christianity.  A  decisive  and 
better  known  example  of  the  favorable  influence  of  mother- 
descent  on  the  status  of  woman  is  afforded  by  the  heena  marriage 
of  early  Arabia.    Under  such  a  system  the  wife  is  not  only  pre- 


i  Herodotus,  Bk.  i,  Ch.  CLXXIII. 

2  That  power  and  relationship  are  entirely  distinct  was  pointed  out 
many  years  ago  by  L.  von  Dargun,  Mutterrecht  und  Vaterrecht,  1892. 
Westermarck  (Origin  and  Development  of  the  Moral  Ideas,  vol.  i,  p. 
655),  who  is  inclined  to  think  that  Steinmetz  has  not  proved  conclusively 
that  mother-descent  involves  less  authority  of  husband  over  wife,  makes 
the  important  qualification  that  the  husband's  authority  is  impaired 
when  he  lives  among  his  wife's  kinsfolk. 


392  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   SEX. 

served  from  the  subjection  involved  by  purchase,  which  always 
casts  upon  her  some  shadow  of  the  inferiority  belonging  to 
property,  but  she  herself  is  the  owner  of  the  tent  and  the  house- 
hold property,  and  enjoys  the  dignity  always  involved  by  the 
possession  of  property  and  the  ability  to  free  herself  from  her 
husband.1 

It  is  also  impossible  to  avoid  connecting  the  primitive 
tendency  to  mother-descent,  and  the  emphasis  it  involved  on 
maternal  rather  than  paternal  generative  energy,  with  the  tend- 
ency to  place  the  goddess  rather  than  the  god  in  the  forefront  of 
primitive  pantheons,  a  tendency  which  cannot  possibly  fail  to 
reflect  honor  on  the  sex  to  which  the  supreme  deity  belongs,  and 
which  may  be  connected  with  the  large  part  which  primitive 
women  often  play  in  the  functions  of  religion.  Thus,  according 
to  traditions  common  to  all  the  central  tribes  of  Australia,  the 
woman  formerly  took  a  much  greater  share  in  the  performance 
of  sacred  ceremonies  which  are  now  regarded  as  coming  almost 
exclusively  within  the  masculine  province,  and  in  at  least  one 
tribe  which  seems  to  retain  ancient  practices  the  women  still 
actually  take  part  in  these  ceremonies.2  It  seems  to  have  been 
much  the  same  in  Europe.  We  observe,  too,  both  in  the  Celtic 
pantheon  and  among  Mediterranean  peoples,  that  while  all  the 
ancient  divinities  have  receded  into  the  dim  background  yet  the 
goddesses  loom  larger  than  the  gods.3  In  Ireland,  where  ancient 
custom  and  tradition  have  always  been  very  tenaciously  preserved, 
women  retained  a  very  high  position,  and  much  freedom  both 
before  and  after  marriage.  "Every  woman/'  it  was  said,  "is  to 
go  the  way  she  willeth  freely,"  and  after  marriage  she  enjoyed 
a  better  position  and  greater  freedom  of  divorce  than  was  afforded 


1  Robertson  Smith,  Kinship  and  Marriage  in  Early  Arabia;  J.  G. 
Frazer  has  pointed  out  (Academy,  March  27,  1886)  that  the  partially 
Semitic  peoples  on  the  North  frontier  of  Abyssinia,  not  subjected  to  the 
revolutionary  processes  of  Islam,  preserve  a  system  closely  resembling 
beena  marriage,  as  well  as  some  traces  of  the  opposite  system,  by  Robert- 
son Smith  called  ba'al  marriage,  in  which  the  wife  is  acquired  by  pur- 
chase and  becomes  a  piece  of  property. 

2  Spencer  and  Gillen,  Northern  Tribes  of  Central  Australia,  p.  358. 

3  Rhys  and  Brynmor- Jones,  The  Welsh  People,  pp.  55-6;  cf.  Rhys, 
Celtic  Heathendom,  p.  93. 


SEXUAL    MORALITY.  393 

either  by  the  Christian  Church  or  the  English  common  law.1 
There  is  less  difficulty  in  recognizing  that  mother-descent  was 
peculiarly  favorable  to  the  high  status  of  women  when  we  realize 
that  even  under  very  unfavorable  conditions  women  have  been 
able  to  exert  great  pressure  on  the  men  and  to  resist  successfully 
the  attempts  to  tyrannize  over  them.2 

If  we  consider  the  status  of  woman  in  the  great  empires  of 
antiquity  we  find  on  the  whole  that  in  their  early  stage,  the  stage 
of  growth,  as  well  as  in  their  final  stage,  the  stage  of  fruition, 
women  tend  to  occupy  a  favorable  position,  while  in  their  middle 
stage,  usually  the  stage  of  predominating  military  organization 
on  a  patriarchal  basis,  women  occupy  a  less  favorable  posi- 
tion. This  cyclic  movement  seems  to  be  almost  a  natural  law  of 
the  development  of  great  social  groups.  It  was  apparently  well 
marked  in  the  very  stable  and  orderly  growth  of  Babylonia.  In 
the  earliest  times  a  Babylonian  woman  had  complete  independ- 
ence and  equal  rights  "with  her  brothers  and  her  husband;  later 
(as  shown  by  the  code  of  Hamurabi)  a  woman's  rights,  though 
not  her  duties,  were  more  circumscribed;  in  the  still  later  Neo- 
Babylonian  periods,  she  again  acquired  equal  rights  with  her 
husband.3 

In  Egypt  the  position  of  women  stood  highest  at  the  end,  but 
it  seems  to  have  been  high  throughout  the  whole  of  the  long 
course  of  Egyptian  history,  and  continuously  improving,  while 
the  fact  that  little  regard  was  paid  to  prenuptial  chastity  and 
that  marriage  contracts  placed  no  stress  on  virginity  indicate  the 
absence  of  the  conception  of  women  as  property.  More  than 
three  thousand  five  hundred  years  ago  men  and  women  were 
recognized  as  equal  in  Egypt.  The  high  position  of  the  Egyptian 
woman  is  significantly  indicated  by  the  fact  that  her  child  was 
never  illegitimate;   illegitimacy  was  not  recognized  even  in  the 


1  Rhys  and  Brynmor-Jones,  op.  cit.,  p.  214. 

2  Crawley  (The  Mystic  Rose,  p.  41  et  seq.)  gives  numerous  instances. 

3  Revillout,  "La  Femme  dans  1'AntiquiteV'  Journal  Asiatique,  1906, 
vol.  vii,  p.  57.  See,  also,  Victor  Marx,  Beitrage  zur  Assyriologie,  1899, 
Bd.  iv,  Heft  1. 


394  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   SEX. 

case  of  a  slave  woman's  child.1  "It  is  the  glory  of  Egyptian 
morality/'  says  Amelineau,  "to  have  been  the  first  to  express  the 
Dignity  of  Woman."2  The  idea  of  marital  authority  was 
altogether  unknown  in  Egypt.  There  can  be  no  doubt  that  the 
high  status  of  woman  in  two  civilizations  so  stable,  so  vital,  so 
long-lived,  and  so  influential  on  human  culture  as  Babylonia  and 
Egypt,  is  a  fact  of  much  significance. 

Among  the  Jews  there  seems  to  have  been  no  intermediate  stage  of 
subordination  of  women,  but  instead  a  gradual  progress  throughout  from 
complete  subjection  of  the  woman  as  wife  to  ever  greater  freedom.  At 
first  the  husband  could  repudiate  his  wife  at  will  without  cause.  (This 
was  not  an  extension  of  patriarchal  authority,  but  a  purely  marital 
authority.)  The  restrictions  on  this  authority  gradually  increased,  and 
begin  to  be  observable  already  in  the  Book  of  Deuteronomy.  The 
Mishnah  went  further  and  forbade  divorce  whenever  the  wife's  condition 
inspired  pity  (as  in  insanity,  captivity,  etc.).  By  A.  D.  1025,  divorce 
was  no  longer  possible  except  for  legitimate  reasons  or  by  the  wife's  con- 
sent. At  the  same  time,  the  wife  also  began  to  acquire  the  right  of 
divorce  in  the  form  of  compelling  the  husband  to  repudiate  her  on  penalty 
of  punishment  in  case  of  refusal.  On  divorce  the  wife  became  an  inde- 
pendent woman  in  her  own  right,  and  was  permitted  to  carry  off  the 
dowry  which  her  husband  gave  her  on  marriage.  Thus,  notwithstanding 
Jewish  respect  for  the  letter  of  the  law,  the  flexible  jurisprudence  of  the 
Rabbis,  in  harmony  with  the  growth  of  culture,  accorded  an  ever-growing 
measure  of  sexual  justice  and  equality  to  women  (D.  W.  Amram,  The 
Jewish  Law  of  Divorce) . 

Among  the  Arabs  the  tendency  of  progress  has  also  been  favorable 
to  women  in  many  respects,  especially  as  regards  inheritance.  Before 
Mahommed,  in  accordance  with  the  system  prevailing  at  Medina,  women 
had  little  or  no  right  of  inheritance.  The  legislation  of  the  Koran  modi- 
fied this  rule,  without  entirely  abolishing  it,  and  placed  women  in  a  much 
better  position.  This  is  attributed  largely  to  the  fact  that  Mahommed 
belonged  not  to  Medina,  but  to  Mecca,  where  traces  of  matriarchal  cus- 
tom still  survived  ( W.  Margais,  Des  Parents  et  des  Allies  Successibles  en 
Droit  Musulman). 


i  Donaldson,  Woman,  pp.  196,  241  et  seq.  Nietzold,  (Die  Ehe  in 
"Agypten,"  p.  17 ) ,  thinks  the  statement  of  Diodorus  that  no  children  were 
illegitimate,  needs  qualification,  but  that  certainly  the  illegitimate  child 
in  Egypt  was  at  no  social  disadvantage. 

2  Amelineau,  La.  Morale  Egyptienne,  p.  194;  Hobhouse,  Morals  in 
Evolution,  vol.  i,  p.  187;  Flinders  Petrie,  Religion  and  Conscience  in 
Ancient  Egypt,  pp.  131  et  seq. 


SEXUAL    MORALITY.  395 

It  may  be  pointed  out — for  it  is  not  always  realized — that  even 
that  stage  of  eivilization — when  it  occurs — which  involves  the  subordina- 
tion and  subjection  of  woman  and  her  rights  really  has  its  origin  in  the 
need  for  the  protection  of  women,  and  is  sometimes  even  a  sign  of  the 
acquirement  of  new  privileges  by  women.  They  are,  as  it  were,  locked 
up,  not  in  order  to  deprive  them  of  their  rights,  but  in  order  to  guard 
those  rights.  In  the  later  more  stable  phase  of  civilization,  when  women 
are  no  longer  exposed  to  the  same  dangers,  this  motive  is  forgotten  and 
the  guardianship  of  woman  and  her  rights  seems,  and  indeed  has  really 
become,  a  hardship  rather  than  an  advantage. 

Of  the  status  of  women  at  Eome  in  the  earliest  periods  we 
know  little  or  nothing ;  the  patriarchal  system  was  already  firmly 
established  when  Eoman  history  begins  to  become  clear  and  it 
involved  unusually  strict  subordination  of  the  woman  to  her 
father  first  and  then  to  her  husband.  But  nothing  is  more  cer- 
tain than  that  the  status  of  women  in  Eome  rose  with  the  rise  of 
civilization,  exactly  in  the  same  way  as  in  Babylonia  and  in 
Egypt.  In  the  case  of  Eome,  however,  the  growing  refinement 
of  civilization,  and  the  expansion  of  the  Empire,  were  associated 
with  the  magnificent  development  of  the  system  of  Eoman  law, 
which  in  its  final  forms  consecrated  the  position  of  women.  In 
the  last  days  of  the  Eepublic  women  already  began  to  attain  the 
same  legal  leyel  as  men,  and  later  the  great  Antonine  juris- 
consults, guided  by  their  theory  of  natural  law,  reached  the 
conception  of  the  equality  of  the  sexes  as  a  principle  of  the  code 
of  equity.  The  patriarchal  subordination  of  women  fell  into 
complete  discredit,  and  this  continued  until,  in  the  days  of 
Justinian,  under  the  influence  of  Christianity,  the  position  of 
women  began  to  suffer.1  In  the  best  days  the  older  forms  of 
Eoman  marriage  gave  place  to  a  form  (apparently  old  but  not 
hitherto  considered  reputable)  which  amounted  in  law  to  a 
temporary  deposit  of  the  woman  by  her  family.  She  was 
independent  of  her  husband  (more  especially  as  she  came  to 
him  with  her  own  dowry)  and  only  nominally  dependent  on  her 
family.  Marriage  was  a  private  contract,  accompanied  by  a 
religious  ceremony  if  desired,  and  being  a  contract  it  could  be 


l  Maine,  Ancient  Law,  Ch.  V. 


396  PSYCHOLOGY   OE   SEX. 

dissolved,  for  any  reason,  in  the  presence  of  competent  witnesses 
and  with  due  legal  forms,  after  the  advice  of  the  family  council 
had  been  taken.  Consent  was  the  essence  of  this  marriage  and 
no  shame,  therefore,  attached  to  its  dissolution.  Nor  had  it  any 
evil  effect  either  on  the  happiness  or  the  morals  of  Roman 
women.1  Such  a  system  is  obviously  more  in  harmony  with 
modern  civilized  feeling  than  any  system  that  has  ever  been  set 
up  in  Christendom. 

In  Eome,  also,  it  is  clear  that  this  system  was  not  a  mere 
legal  invention  but  the  natural  outgrowth  of  an  enlightened 
public  feeling  in  favor  of  the  equality  of  men  and  women,  often 
even  in  the  field  of  sexual  morality.  Plautus,  who  makes  the 
old  slave  Syra  ask  why  there  is  not  the  same  law  in  this  respect 
for  the  husband  as  for  the  wife,2  had  preceded  the  legist  Ulpian 
who  wrote :  "It  seems  to  be  very  unjust  that  a  man  demands 
chastity  of  his  wife  while  he  himself  shows  no  example  of  it."3 
Such  demands  lie  deeper  than  social  legislation,  but  the  fact  that 
these  questions  presented  themselves  to  typical  Eoman  men 
indicates  the  general  attitude  towards  women.  In  the  final  stage 
of  Eoman  society  the  bond  of  the  patriarchal  system  so  far  as 
women  were  concerned  dwindled  to  a  mere  thread  binding  them 
to  their  fathers  and  leaving  them  quite  free  face  to  face  with 
their  husbands.  "The  Eoman  matron  of  the  Empire,"  says 
Hobhouse,  "was  more  fully  her  own  mistress  than  the  married 
woman  of  any  earlier  civilization,  with  the  possible  exception  of  a 
certain  period  of  Egyptian  history,  and,  it  must  be  added,  than 
the  wife  of  any  later  civilization  down  to  our  own  generation.4 

On  the  strength  of  the  statements  of  two  satirical  writers,  Juvenal 
and  Tacitus,  it  has  been  supposed  by  many  that  Eoman  women  of  the 
late  period  were  given  up  to  license.  It  is,  however,  idle  to  seek  in 
satirists  any  balanced  picture  of  a  great  civilization.  Hobhouse  (loc. 
cit.,  p.  216)  concludes  that  on  the  whole,  Roman  women  worthily 
retained  the  position  of   their  husbands'  companions,   counsellors   and 


1  Donaldson,  Woman,  pp.  109,  120. 

2  Her  cat  or,  iv,  5. 

3  Digest  XL VIII,  13,  5. 

4  Hobhouse,  Morals  in  Evolution,  vol.  i,  p.  213. 


SEXUAL    MORALITY.  397 

friends  which  they  had  held  when  an  austere  system  placed  them  legally 
in  his  power.  Most  authorities  seem  now  to  be  of  this  opinion,  though 
at  an  earlier  period  Friedlander  expressed  himself  more  dubiously.  Thus 
Dill,  in  his  judicious  Roman  Society  (p.  163),  states  that  the  Roman 
woman's  position,  both  in  law  and  in  fact,  rose  during  the  Empire ;  with- 
out being  less  virtuous  or  respected,  she  became  far  more  accomplished 
and  attractive;  with  fewer  restraints  she  had  greater  charm  and 
influence,  even  in  public  affairs,  and  was  more  and  more  the  equal  of  her 
husband.  "In  the  last  age  of  the  Western  Empire  there  is  no  deteriora- 
tion in  the  position  and  influence  of  women."  Principal  Donaldson,  also, 
in  his  valuable  historical  sketch,  Woman,  considers  (p.  113)  that  there 
was  no  degradation  of  morals  in  the  Roman  Empire ;  "the  licentiousness 
of  Pagan  Rome  is  nothing  to  the  licentiousness  of  Christian  Africa, 
Rome,  and  Gaul,  if  we  can  put  any  reliance  on  the  description  of 
Salvian."  Salvian's  description  of  Christendom  is  probably  exaggerated 
and  one-sided,  but  exactly  the  same  may  be  said  in  an  even  greater 
degree  of  the  descriptions  of  ancient  Rome  left  by  clever  Pagan  satirists 
and  ascetic  Christian  preachers. 

It  thus  becomes  necessary  to  leap  over  considerably  more  than 
a  thousand  years  before  we  reach  a  stage  of  civilization  in  any 
degree  approaching  in  height  the  final  stage  of  Roman  society. 
In  the  eighteenth  and  nineteenth  centuries,  at  first  in  France, 
then  in  England,  we  find  once  more  the  moral  and  legal  move- 
ment tending  towards  the  equalization  of  women  with  men.  We 
find  also  a  long  series  of  pioneers  of  that  movement  foreshadow- 
ing its  developments :  Mary  Astor,  "Sophia,  a  Lady  of  Quality," 
Segur,  Mrs.  Wheeler,  and  very  notably  Mary  Wollstonecraft  in 
A  Vindication  of  the  Rights  of  Woman,  and  John  Stuart  Mill  in 
The  Subjection  of  Women.1 

The  main  European  stream  of  influences  in  this  matter 
within  historical  times  has  involved,  we  can  scarcely  doubt  when 
we  take  into  consideration  its  complex  phenomena  as  a  whole,  the 
maintenance  of  an  inequality  to  the  disadvantage  of  women. 
The  fine  legacy  of  Roman  law  to  Europe  was  indeed  favorable  to 
women,  but  that  legacy  was  dispersed  and  for  the  most  part  lost 
in   the   more   predominating   influence   of   tenacious   Teutonic 


1  For  an  account  of  the  work  of  some  of  the  less  known  of  these 
pioneers,  see  a  series  of  articles  by  Harriet  Mcllquham  in  the  West- 
minster Review,  especially  Nov.,  1898,  and  Nov.,  1903. 


398  PSYCHOLOGY   OP   SEX. 

custom  associated  with  the  vigorously  organized  Christian 
Church.  Notwithstanding  that  the  facts  do  not  all  point  in  the 
same  direction,  and  that  there  is  consequently  some  difference  of 
opinion,  it  seems  evident  that  on  the  whole  both  Teutonic  custom 
and  Christian  religion  were  unfavorable  to  the  equality  of 
women  with  men.  Teutonic  custom  in  this  matter  was  deter- 
mined by  two  decisive  factors:  (1)  the  existence  of  marriage  by 
purchase  which  although,  as  Crawley  has  pointed  out,  it  by  no 
means  necessarily  involves  the  degradation  of  women,  certainly 
tends  to  place  them  in  an  inferior  position,  and  (2)  pre-occupa- 
tion  with  war  which  is  always  accompanied  by  a  depreciation  of 
peaceful  and  feminine  occupations  and  an  indifference  to  love. 
Christianity  was  at  its  origin  favorable  to  women  because  it 
liberated  and  glorified  the  most  essentially  feminine  emotions, 
but  when  it  became  an  established  and  organized  religion  with 
definitely  ascetic  ideals,  its  whole  emotional  tone  grew  unfavor- 
able to  women.  It  had  from  the  first  excluded  them  from  any 
priestly  function.  It  now  regarded  them  as  the  special  repre- 
sentatives of  the  despised  element  of  sex  in  life.1  The  eccentric 
Tertullian  had  once  declared  that  woman  was  janua  Didboli; 
nearly  seven  hundred  years  later,  even  the  gentle  and  philosophic 
Anselm  wrote :  Femina  fax  est  Satance.2 

Thus  among  the  Franks,  with  whom  the  practice  of  monogamy  pre- 
vailed, a  woman  was  never  free;  she  could  not  buy  or  sell  or  inherit 
without  the  permission  of  those  to  whom  she  belonged.  She  passed  into 
the  possession  of  her  husband  by  acquisition,  and  when  he  fixed  the 
wedding  day  he  gave  her  parents  coins  of  small  money  as  arrha,  and 
the  day  after  the  wedding  she  received  from  him  a  present,  the  morgen- 
gaoe.  A  widow  belonged  to  her  parents  again  (Bedollierre,  Histoire  de 
Masurs  des  Frangais,  vol.  i,  p.  180).  It  is  true  that  the  Salic  law 
ordained  a  pecuniary  fine  for  touching  a  woman,  even  fnr  squeezing  her 
finger,  but  it  is  clear  that  the  offence  thus  committed  was  an  offence 
against  property,  and  by  no  means  against  the  sanctity  of  a  woman's 
personality.     The  primitive  German  husband  could  sell  his  children,  and 


1  The  influence  of  Christianity  on  the  position  of  women  has  been 
well  discussed  by  Lecky,  History  of  European  Morals,  vol.  ii,  pp.  316  et 
seq.,  and  more  recently  by  Donaldson,  Woman,  Bk.  iii. 

2  Migne,  Patrologia,  vol.  elviii,  p.  686. 


SEXUAL    MORALITY.  399 

sometimes  his  wife,  even  into  slavery.  In  the  eleventh  century  cases  of 
wife-selling  are  still  heard  of,  though  no  longer  recognized  by  law. 

The  traditions  of  Christianity  were  more  favorable  to  sexual 
equality  than  were  Teutonic  customs,  but  in  becoming  amalgamated  with 
those  customs  they  added  their  own  special  contribution  as  to  woman's 
impurity.  This  spiritual  inferiority  of  woman  was  significantly  shown 
by  the  restrictions  sometimes  placed  on  women  in  church,  and  even  in 
the  right  to  enter  a  church;  in  some  places  they  were  compelled  to 
remain  in  the  narthex,  even  in  non-monastic  churches  (see  for  these 
rules,  Smith  and  Cheetham,  Dictionary  of  Christian  Antiquities,  art. 
"Sexes,  Separation  of" ) . 

By  attempting  to  desexualize  the  idea  of  man  and  to  oversexualize 
the  idea  of  woman,  Christianity  necessarily  degraded  the  position  of 
woman  and  the  conception  of  womanhood.  As  Donaldson  well  remarks, 
in  pointing  this  out    (op.  cit.,  p.  182),  "I  may  define  man  as  a  male 

human  being  and  woman  as  a  female  human  being What  the 

early  Christians  did  was  to  strike  the  'male'  out  of  the  definition  of  man, 
and  'human  being'  out  of  the  definition  of  woman."  Religion  generally 
appears  to  be  a  powerfully  depressing  influence  on  the  position  of  woman 
notwithstanding  the  appeal  which  it  makes  to  woman.  Westermarck 
considers,  indeed  (Origin  and  Development  of  the  Moral  Ideas,  vol.  i, 
p.  669),  that  religion  "has  probably  been  the  most  persistent  cause  of 
the  wife's  subjection  to  her  husband's  rule." 

It  is  sometimes  said  that  the  Christian  tendency  to  place  women 
in  an  inferior  spiritual  position  went  so  far  that  a  church  council 
formally  denied  that  women  have  souls.  This  foolish  story  has  indeed 
been  repeated  in  a  parrot-like  fashion  by  a  number  of  writers.  The 
source  of  the  story  is  probably  to  be  found  in  the  fact,  recorded  by 
Gregory  of  Tours,  in  his  history  (lib.  viii,  cap.  XX),  that  at  the  Council 
of  Macon,  in  585,  a  bishop  was  in  doubt  as  to  whether  the  term  "man" 
included  woman,  but  was  convinced  by  the  other  members  of  the  Council 
that  it  did.  The  same  difficulty  has  presented  itself  to  lawyers  in  more 
modern  times,  and  has  not  always  been  resolved  so  favorably  to  woman 
as  by  the  Christian  Council  of  Macon. 

The  low  estimate  of  women  that  prevailed  even  in  the  early  Church 
is  admitted  by  Christian  scholars.  "We  cannot  but  notice,"  writes 
Meyrick  (art.  "Marriage,"  Smith  and  Cheetham,  Dictionary  of  Christian- 
Antiquities),  "even  in  the  greatest  of  the  Christian  fathers  a  lamentably 
low  estimate  of  woman,  and  consequently  of  the  marriage  relationship. 
Even  St.  Augustine  can  see  no  justification  for  marriage,  except  in  a 
grave  desire  deliberately  adopted  of  having  children;  and  in  accordance 
with  this  view,  all  married  intercourse,  except  for  this  single  purpose,  is 
harshly  condemned.  If  marriage  is  sought  after  for  the  sake  of  children, 
it  is  justifiable;    if  entered  into  as  a  remedium  to  avoid  worse  evils,  it 


400  PSYCHOLOGY   OF    SEX. 

is  pardonable;  the  idea  of  the  mutual  society,  help,  and  comfort  that 
the  one  ought  to  have  of  the  other,  both  in  prosperity  and  adversity, 
hardly  existed,  and  could  hardly  yet  exist." 

From  the  woman's  point  of  view,  Lily  Braun,  in  her  important 
work  on  the  woman  question  (Die  Frauenfrage,  1901,  pp.  28  et  seq.)  con- 
cludes that,  in  so  far  as  Christianity  was  favorable  to  women,  we  must 
see  that  favorable  influence  in  the  placing  of  women  on  the  same  moral 
level  as  men,  as  illustrated  in  the  saying  of  Jesus,  "Let  him  who  is  with- 
out sin  amongst  you  cast  the  first  stone,"  implying  that  each  sex  owes 
the  same  fidelity.  It  reached,  she  adds,  no  further  than  this.  "Chris- 
tianity, which  women  accepted  as  a  deliverance  with  so  much  enthusiasm, 
and  died  for  as  martyrs,  has  not  fulfilled  their  hopes." 

Even  as  regards  the  moral  equality  of  the  sexes  in  marriage,  the 
position  of  Christian  authorities  was  sometimes  equivocal.  One  of  the 
greatest  of  the  Fathers,  St.  Basil,  in  the  latter  half  of  the  fourth  cen- 
tury, distinguished  between  adultery  and  fornication  as  committed  by  a 
married  man;  if  with  a  married  woman,  it  was  adultery;  if  with  an 
unmarried  woman,  it  was  merely  fornication.  In  the  former  case,  a  wife 
should  not  receive  her  husband  back ;  in  the  latter  case,  she  should  ( art. 
"Adultery,"  Smith  and  Cheetham,  Dictionary  of  Christian  Antiquities) . 
Such  a  decision,  by  attaching  supreme  importance  to  a  distinction  which 
could  make  no  difference  to  the  wife,  involved  a  failure  to  recognize  her 
moral  personality.  Many  of  the  Fathers  in  the  Western  Church,  how- 
ever, like  Jerome,  Augustine,  and  Ambrose,  could  see  no  reason  why  the 
moral  law  should  not  be  the  same  for  the  husband  as  for  the  wife,  but 
as  late  Roman  feeling  both  on  the  legal  and  popular  side  was  already 
approximating  to  that  view,  the  influence  of  Christianity  was  scarcely 
required  to  attain  it.  It  ultimately  received  formal  sanction  in  the 
Roman  Canon  Law,  which  decreed  that  adultery  is  equally  committed  by 
either  conjugal  party  in  two  degrees :  ( 1 )  simplex,  of  the  married  with 
the  unmarried,  and  (2)   duplex,  of  the  married  with  the  married. 

It  can  scarcely  be  said,  however,  that  Christianity  succeeded  in 
attaining  the  inclusion  of  this  view  of  the  moral  equality  of  the  sexes 
into  actual  practical  morality.  It  was  accepted  in  theory;  it  was  not 
followed  in  practice.  W.  G.  Sumner,  discussing  this  question  [Folk- 
ways, pp.  359-361),  concludes:  "Why  are  these  views  not  in  the  mores? 
Undoubtedly  it  is  because  they  are  dogmatic  in  form,  invented  or  imposed 
by  theological  authority  or  philosophical  speculation.  They  do  not  grow 
out  of  the  experience  of  life,  and  cannot  be  verified  by  it.  The  reasons 
are  in  ultimate  physiological  facts,  by  virtue  of  which  one  is  a  woman 
and  the  other  is  a  man."  There  is,  however,  more  to  be  said  on  this 
point  later. 


SEXUAL    MORALITY.  401 

It  was  probably,  however,  not  so  much  the  Church  as 
Teutonic  customs  and  the  development  of  the  feudal  system,  with 
the  masculine  and  military  ideals  it  fostered,  that  was  chiefly 
decisive  in  fixing  the  inferior  position  of  women  in  the  mediaeval 
world.  Even  the  ideas  of  chivalry,  which  have  often  been 
supposed  to  be  peculiarly  favorable  to  women,  so  far  as  they 
affected  women  seem  to  have  been  of  little  practical  significance. 

In  his  great  work  on  chivalry  Gautier  brings  forward  much  evi- 
dence to  show  that  the  feudal  spirit,  like  the  military  spirit  always  and 
everywhere,  on  the  whole  involved  at  bottom  a  disdain  for  women,  even 
though  it  occasionally  idealized  them.  "Go  into  your  painted  and  gilded 
rooms,"  we  read  in  Renaus  de  Montauban,  "sit  in  the  shade,  make  your- 
selves comfortable,  drink,  eat,  work  tapestry,  dye  silk,  but  remember 
that  you  must  not  occupy  yourselves  with  our  affairs.  Our  business  is 
to  strike  with  the  steel  sword.  Silence!"  And  if  the  woman  insists  she 
Is  struck  on  the  face  till  the  blood  comes.  The  husband  had  a  legal  right 
to  beat  his  wife,  not  only  for  adultery,  but  even  for  contradicting  him. 
Women  were  not,  however,  entirely  without  power,  and  in  a  thirteenth 
century  collection  of  Coutumes,  it  is  set  down  that  a  husband  must  only 
beat  his  wife  reasonably,  resnablement.  (As  regards  the  husband's  right 
to  chastise  his  wife,  see  also  Hobhouse,  Morals  in  Evolution,  vol.  i,  p. 
234.  In  England  it  was  not  until  the  reign  of  Charles  II,  from  which 
so  many  modern  movements  date,  that  the  husband  was  deprived  of  this 
legal  right.) 

In  the  eyes  of  a  feudal  knight,  it  may  be  added,  the  beauty  of  a 
horse  competed,  often  successfully,  with  the  beauty  of  a  woman.  In 
Girbers  de  Mets,  two  knights,  Garin  and  his  cousin  Girbert,  ride  by  a 
window  at  which  sits  a  beautiful  girl  with  the  face  of  a  rose  and  the 
white  flesh  of  a  lily.  "Look,  cousin  Girbert,  look!  By  Saint  Mary,  a 
beautiful  woman!"  "Ah,"  Girbert  replies,  "a  beautiful  beast  is  my 
horse!"  "I  have  never  seen  anything  so  charming  as  that  young  girl 
with  her  fresh  color  and  her  dark  eyes,"  says  Garin.  "I  know  no  steed 
to  compare  with  mine,"  retorts  Girbert.  When  the  men  were  thus 
absorbed  in  the  things  that  pertain  to  war,  it  is  not  surprising  that 
amorous  advances  were  left  to  young  girls  to  make.  "In  all  the  chansons 
de  geste,"  Gautier  remarks,  "it  is  the  young  girls  who  make  the  advances, 
often  with  effrontery,"  though,  he  adds,  wives  are  represented  as  more 
virtuous  (L.  Gautier,  La  Chevalerie,  pp.  236-8,  348-50). 

In  England  Pollock  and  Maitland  (History  of  English,  Law,  vol.  ii, 
p.  437)  do  not  believe  that  a  life-long  tutela  of  women  ever  existed  as 
among  other  Teutonic  peoples.  "From  the  Conquest  onwards,"  Hobhouse 
states  {op.  cit.,  vol.  i,  p.  224),  "the  unmarried  English  woman,  on  attain- 

26 


402  PSYCHOLOGY  OF   SEX. 

ing  her  majority,  becomes  fully  equipped  with  all  legal  and  civil  rights, 
as  much  a  legal  personality  as  the  Babylonian  woman  had  been  three 
thousand  years  before."  But  the  developed  English  law  more  than  made 
up  for  any  privileges  thus  accorded  to  the  unmarried  by  the  inconsistent 
manner  in  which  it  swathed  up  the  wife  in  endless  folds  of  irrespon- 
sibility, except  when  she  committed  the  supreme  offence  of  injuring  her 
lord  and  master.  The  English  wife,  as  Hobhouse  continues  (loc.  cit.) 
was,  if  not  her  husband's  slave,  at  any  rate  his  liege  subject;  if  she 
killed  him  it  was  "petty  treason,"  the  revolt  of  a  subject  against  a 
sovereign  in  a  miniature  kingdom,  and  a  more  serious  offence  than  mur- 
der. Murder  she  could  not  commit  in  his  presence,  for  her  personality 
was  merged  in  him;  he  was  responsible  for  most  of  her  crimes  and 
offences  ( it  was  that  fact  which  gave  him  the  right  to  chastise  her ) ,  and 
he  could  not  even  enter  into  a  contract  with  her,  for  that  would  be  enter- 
ing into  a  contract  with  himself.  "The  very  being  and  legal  existence 
of  a  woman  is  suspended  during  marriage,"  said  Blackstone,  "or  at  least 
is  incorporated  and  consolidated  into  that  of  her  husband,  under  whose 
wing,  protection  and  cover  she  performs  everything.  So  great  a  favor- 
ite," he  added,  "is  the  female  sex  of  the  laws  of  England."  "The 
strength  of  woman,"  says  Hobhouse,  interpreting  the  sense  of  the  Eng- 
lish law,  "was  her  weakness.  She  conquered  by  yielding.  Her  gentle- 
ness had  to  be  guarded  from  the  turmoil  of  the  world,  her  fragrance  to 
be  kept  sweet  and  fresh,  away  from  the  dust  and  the  smoke  of  battle. 
Hence  her  need  of  a  champion  and  guardian." 

In  France  the  wife  of  the  mediaeval  and  Renaissance  periods 
occupied  much  the  same  position  in  her  husband's  house.  He  was  her 
absolute  master  and  lord,  the  head  and  soul  of  "the  feminine  and  feeble 
creature"  who  owed  to  him  "perfect  love  and  obedience."  She  was  his 
chief  servant,  the  eldest  of  his  children,  his  wife  and  subject;  she  signed 
herself  "your  humble  obedient  daughter  and  friend,"  when  she  wrote  to 
him.  The  historian,  De  Maulde  la  Clavigre,  who  has  brought  together 
evidence  on  this  point  in  his  Femmes  de  la  Renaissance,  remarks  that 
even  though  the  husband  enjoyed  this  lofty  and  superior  position  in 
marriage,  it  was  still  generally  he,  and  not  the  wife,  who  complained  of 
the  hardships  of  marriage. 

Law  and  custom  assumed  that  a  woman  should  be  more  or 
less  under  the  protection  of  a  man,  and  even  the  ideals  of  fine 
womanhood  which  arose  in  this  society,  during  feudal  and  later 
times,  were  necessarily  tinged  by  the  same  conception.  It 
involved  the  inequality  of  women  as  compared  with  men,  but 
under  the  social  conditions  of  a  feudal  society  such  inequality 
was  to  woman's  advantage.    Masculine  force  was  the  determin- 


SEXUAL    MORALITY.  403 

ing  factor  in  life  and  it  was  necessary  that  every  woman  should 
have  a  portion  of  this  force  on  her  side.  This  sound  and 
reasonable  idea  naturally  tended  to  persist  even  after  the  growth 
of  civilization  rendered  force  a  much  less  decisive  factor  in  social 
life.  In  England  in  Queen  Elizabeth's  time  no  woman  must  be 
masterless,  although  the  feminine  subjects  of  Queen  Elizabeth 
had  in  their  sovereign  the  object  lesson  of  a  woman  who  could 
play  a  very  brilliant  and  effective  part  in  life  and  yet  remain 
absolutely  masterless.  Still  later,  in  the  eighteenth  century,  even 
so  fine  a  moralist  as  Shaftesbury,  in  his  Characteristics,  refers  to 
lovers  of  married  women  as  invaders  of  property.  If  such  con- 
ceptions still  ruled  even  in  the  best  minds,  it  is  not  surprising 
that  in  the  same  century,  even  in  the  following  century,  they 
were  carried  out  into  practice  by  less  educated  people  who 
frankly  bought  and  sold  women. 

Schrader,  in  his  Reallexicon  (art.  "Brautkauf " ) ,  points  out  that, 
originally,  the  purchase  of  a  wife  was  the  purchase  of  her  person,  and 
not  merely  of  the  right  of  protecting  her.  The  original  conception  prob- 
ably persisted  long  in  Great  Britain  on  account  of  its  remoteness  from 
the  centres  of  civilization.  In  the  eleventh  century  Gregory  VII  desired 
Lanfranc  to  stop  the  sale  of  wives  in  Scotland  and  elsewhere  in  the  island 
of  the  English  (Pike,  History  of  Crime  in  England,  vol.  i,  p.  99).  The 
practice  never  quite  died  out,  however,  in  remote  country  districts. 

Such  transactions  have  taken  place  even  in  London.  Thus  in  the 
Annual  Register  for  1767  (p.  99)  we  read:  "About  three  weeks  ago  a 
bricklayer's  laborer  at  Marylebone  sold  a  woman,  whom  he  had  cohabited 
with  for  several  years,  to  a  fellow-workman  for  a  quarter  guinea  and  a 
gallon  of  beer.  The  workman  went  off  with  the  purchase,  and  she  has 
since  had  the  good  fortune  to  have  a  legacy  of  £200,  and  some  plate,  left 
her  by  a  deceased  uncle  in  Devonshire.  The  parties  were  married  last 
Friday." 

The  Rev.  J.  Edward  Vaux  (Church  Folk-lore,  second  edition,  p. 
146)  narrates  two  authentic  cases  in  which  women  had  been  bought  by 
their  husbands  in  open  market  in  the  nineteenth  century.  In  one  case 
the  wife,  with  her  own  full  consent,  was  brought  to  market  with  a  halter 
round  her  neck,  sold  for  half  a  crown,  and  led  to  her  new  home,  twelve 
miles  off  by  the  new  husband  who  had  purchased  her;  in  the  other  case 
a  publican  bought  another  man's  wife  for  a  two-gallon  jar  of  gin. 

It  is  the  same  conception  of  woman  as  property  which,  even  to  the 
present,  has  caused  the  retention  in  many  legal  codes  of  clauses  render- 


404  PSYCHOLOGY   OP   SEX. 

ing  a  man  liable  to  pay  pecuniary  damages  to  a  woman,  previously  a 
virgin,  whom  he  has  intercourse  with  and  subsequently  forsakes  ( Natalie 
Fuchs,  "Die  Jungfernschaft  im  Recht  und  Sitte,"  Sexual-Probleme,  Feb., 
1908).  The  woman  is  "dishonored"  by  sexual  intercourse,  depreciated 
in  her  market  value,  exactly  as  a  new  garment  becomes  "second-hand," 
even  if  it  has  but  once  been  worn..  A  man,  on  the  other  hand,  would 
disdain  the  idea  that  his  personal  value  could  be  diminished  by  any 
number  of  acts  of  sexual  intercourse. 

This  fact  has  even  led  some  to  advocate  the  "abolition  of  physical 
virginity."  Thus  the  German  authoress  of  Una  Poenitentium  (1907), 
considering  that  the  protection  of  a  woman  is  by  no  means  so  well  secured 
by  a  little  piece  of  membrane  as  by  the  presence  of  a  true  and  watchful 
soul  inside,  advocates  the  operation  of  removal  of  the  hymen  in  child- 
hood. It  is  undoubtedly  true  that  the  undue  importance  attached  to  the 
hymen  has  led  to  a  false  conception  of  feminine  "honor,"  and  to  an 
unwholesome  conception  of  feminine  purity. 

Custom  and  law  are  slowly  changing  in  harmony  with 
changed  social  conditions  which  no  longer  demand  the  subjection 
of  women  either  in  their  own  interests  or  in  the  interests  of  the 
community.  Concomitantly  with  these  changes  a  different  ideal 
of  womanly  personality  is  deYeloping.  It  is  true  that  the  ancient 
ideal  of  the  lordship  of  the  husband  over  the  wife  is  still  more 
or  less  consciously  affirmed  around  us.  The  husband  frequently 
dictates  to  the  wife  what  avocations  she  may  not  pursue,  what 
places  she  may  not  visit,  what  people  she  may  not  know,  what 
books  she  may  not  read.  He  assumes  to  control  her,  even  in 
personal  matters  having  no  direct  concern  with  himself,  by 
virtue  of  the  old  masculine  prerogative  of  force  which  placed  a 
woman  under  the  hand,  as  the  ancient  patriarchal  legists  termed 
it,  of  a  man.  It  is,  however,  becoming  more  and  more  widely 
recognized  that  such  a  part  is  not  suited  to  the  modern  man.  The 
modern  man,  as  Eosa  Mayreder  has  pointed  out  in  a  thoughtful 
essay,1  is  no  longer  equipped  to  play  this  domineering  part  in 
relation  to  his  wife.  The  "noble  savage,"  leading  a  wild  life  on 
mountain  and  in  forest,  hunting  dangerous  beasts  and  scalping 
enemies  when  necessary,  may  occasionally  bring  his  club  gently 
and  effectively  on  to  the  head  of  his  wife,  even,  it  may  be,  with 

i  Rosa  Mayreder,  "Einiges  liber  die  Starke  Faust,"  Zur  KritiJc  der 
Weiblichkeit,  1905. 


SEXUAL    MORALITY.  405 

grateful  appreciation  on  her  part.1  But  the  modern  man,  who 
for  the  most  part  spends  his  days  tamely  at  a  desk,  who  has  been 
trained  to  endure  silently  the  insults  and  humiliations  which 
superior  officials  or  patronizing  clients  may  inflict  upon  him, 
this  typical  modern  man  is  no  longer  able  to  assume  effectually 
the  part  of  the  "noble  savage"  when  he  returns  to  his  home.  He 
is  indeed  so  unfitted  for  the  part  that  his  wife  resents  his 
attempts  to  play  it.  He  is  gradually  recognizing  this,  even 
apart  from  any  consciousness  of  the  general  trend  of  civiliza- 
tion. The  modern  man  of  ideas  recognizes  that,  as  a  matter 
of  principle,  his  wife  is  entitled  to  equality  with  himself; 
the  modern  man  of  the  world  feels  that  it  would  be  both  ridiculous 
and  inconvenient  not  to  accord  his  wife  much  the  same  kind  of 
freedom  which  he  himself  possesses.  And,  moreover,  while  the 
modern  man  has  to  some  extent  acquired  feminine  qualities,  the 
modern  woman  has  to  a  corresponding  extent  acquired  masculine 
qualities. 

Brief  and  summary  as  the  preceding  discussion  has  neces- 
sarily been,  it  will  have  served  to  bring  us  face  to  face  with  the 
central  fact  in  the  sexual  morality  which  the  growth  of  civiliza- 
tion has  at  the  present  day  rendered  inevitable :  personal  respon- 
sibility. "The  responsible  human  being,  man  or  woman,  is  the 
centre  of  modern  ethics  as  of  modern  law ;"  that  is  the  conclusion 
reached  by  Hobhouse  in  his  discussion  of  the  evolution  of  human 
morality.2  The  movement  which  is  taking  place  among  us  to 
liberate  sexual  relationships  from  an  excessive  bondage  to  fixed 
and  arbitrary  regulations  would  have  been  impossible  and  mis- 
chievous but  for  the  concomitant  growth  of  a  sense  of  personal 
responsibility  in  the  members  of  the  community.  It  could  not 
indeed  have  subsisted  for  a  single  year  without  degenerating  into 
license    and    disorder.     Freedom    in    sexual    relations    involves 


1  Rasmussen  (People  of  the  Polar  North,  p.  56) ,  describes  a  ferocious 
quarrel  between  husband  and  wife,  who  each  in  turn  knocked  the  other 
down.  "Somewhat  later,  when  I  peeped  in,  they  were  lying  affectionately 
asleep,  with  their  arms  around  each  other." 

2  Hobhouse,  Morals  in  Evolution,  vol.  ii,  p.  367.  Dr.  Stocker,  in 
Die  Liebe  und  die  Frauen,  also  insists  on  the  significance  of  this  factor 
of  personal  responsibility. 


406  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   SEX. 

mutual  trust  and  that  can  only  rest  on  a  basis  of  personal  respon- 
sibility. Where  there  can  be  no  reliance  on  personal  respon- 
sibility there  can  be  no  freedom.  In  most  fields  of  moral  action 
this  sense  of  personal  responsibility  is  acquired  at  a  fairly  early 
stage  of  social  progress.  Sexual  morality  is  the  last  field  of 
morality  to  be  brought  within  the  sphere  of  personal  respon- 
sibility. The  community  imposes  the  most  varied,  complicated, 
and  artificial  codes  of  sexual  morality  on  its  members,  especially 
its  feminine  members,  and,  naturally  enough,  it  is  always  very 
suspicious  of  their  ability  to  observe  these  codes,  and  is  careful 
to  allow  them,  so  far  as  possible,  no  personal  responsibility  in  the 
matter.  But  a  training  in  restraint,  when  carried  through  a 
long  series  of  generations,  is  the  best  preparation  for  freedom. 
The  law  laid  on  the  earlier  generations,  as  old  theology  stated 
the  matter,  has  been  the  schoolmaster  to  bring  the  later  genera- 
tions to  Christ;  or,  as  new  science  expresses  exactly  the  same 
idea,  the  later  generations  have  become  immunized  and  have 
finally  acquired  a  certain  degree  of  protection  against  the  virus 
which  would  have  destroyed  the  earlier  generations. 

The  process  by  which  a  people  acquires  the  sense  of  personal  respon- 
sibility is  slow,  and  perhaps  it  cannot  be  adequately  acquired  at  all  by 
races  lacking  a  high  grade  of  nervous  organization.  This  is  especially 
the  case  as  regards  sexual  morality,  and  has  often  been  illustrated  on 
the  contact  of  a  higher  with  a  lower  civilization.  It  has  constantly 
happened  that  missionaries — entirely  against  their  own  wishes,  it  need 
not  be  said — by  overthrowing  the  strict  moral  system  they  have  found 
established,  and  by  substituting  the  freedom  of  European  customs  among 
people  entirely  unprepared  for  such  freedom,  have  exerted  the  most 
disastrous  effects  on  morality.  This  has  been  the  case  among  the  for- 
merly well-organized  and  highly  moral  Baganda  of  Central  Africa,  as 
recorded  in  an  official  report  by  Colonel  Lambkin  (British  Medical  Jour- 
nal, Oct.  3,  1908). 

As  regards  Polynesia,  also,  R.  L.  Stevenson,  in  his  interesting  book, 
In  the  South  Seas  (Ch.  V),  pointed  out  that,  while  before  the  coming  of 
the  whites  the  Polynesians  were,  on  the  whole,  chaste,  and  the  young 
carefully  watched,  now  it  is  far  otherwise. 

Even  in  Fiji,  where,  according  to  Lord  Stanmore — who  was  High 
Commissioner  of  the  Pacific,  and  an  independent  critic — missionary  effort 
has  been  "wonderfully  successful,"  where  all  own  at  least  nominal 
allegiance  to  Christianity,  which  has  much  modified  life  and  character, 


6EXUAL    MORALITY.  407 

yet  chastity  has  suffered.  This  was  shown  by  a  Royal  Commission  on 
the  condition  of  the  native  races  in  Fiji.  Mr.  Fitchett,  commenting  on 
this  report  (Australasian  Review  of  Reviews,  Oct.,  1897)  remarks:  "Not 
a  few  witnesses  examined  by  the  commission  declare  that  the  moral 
advance  in  Fiji  is  of  a  curiously  patchy  type.  The  abolition  of  polygamy, 
for  example,  they  say,  has  not  told  at  every  point  in  favor  of  women. 
The  woman  is  the  toiler  in  Fiji;  and  when  the  support  of  the  husband 
was  distributed  over  four  wives,  the  burden  on  each  wife  was  less  than 
it  is  now,  when  it  has  to  be  carried  by  one.  In  heathen  times  female 
chastity  was  guarded  by  the  club;  a  faithless  wife,  an  unmarried 
mother,  was  summarily  put  to  death.  Christianity  has  abolished  club- 
law,  and  purely  moral  restraints,  or  the  terror  of  the  penalties  of  the 
next  world,  do  not,  to  the  limited  imagination  of  the  Fijian,  quite  take 
its  place.     So  the  standard  of  Fijian  chastity  is  distressingly  low." 

It  must  always  be  remembered  that  when  the  highly  organized 
primitive  system  of  mixed  spiritual  and  physical  restraints  is  removed, 
chastity  becomes  more  delicately  and  unstably  poised.  The  controlling 
power  of  personal  responsibility,  valuable  and  essential  as  it  is,  cannot 
permanently  and  unremittingly  restrain  the  volcanic  forces  of  the  pas- 
sion of  love  even  in  high  civilizations.  "No  perfection  of  moral  consti- 
tution in  a  woman,"  Hinlon  has  well  said,  "no  power  of  will,  no  wish 
and  resolution  to  be  'good,'  no  force  of  religion  or  control  of  custom,  can 
secure  what  is  called  the  virtue  of  woman.  The  emotion  of  absolute 
devotion  with  which  some  man  may  inspire  her  will  sweep  them  all  away. 
Society,  in  choosing  to  erect  itself  on  that  basis,  chooses  inevitable  dis- 
order, and  so  long  as  it  continues  to  choose  it  will  continue  to  have  that 
result." 

It  is  necessary  to  insist  for  a  while  on  this  personal  respon- 
sibility in  matters  of  sexual  morality,  in  the  form  in  which  it  is 
making  itself  felt  among  us,  and  to  search  out  its  implications. 
The  most  important  of  these  is  undoubtedly  economic  independ- 
ence. That  is  indeed  so  important  that  moral  responsibility  in 
any  fine  sense  can  scarcely  be  said  to  have  any  existence  in  its 
absence.  Moral  responsibility  and  economic  independence  are 
indeed  really  identical ;  they  are  but  two  sides  of  the  same  social 
fact.  The  responsible  person  is  the  person  who  is  able  to  answer 
for  his  actions  and,  if  need  be,  to  pay  for  them.  The  economic- 
ally dependent  person  can  accept  a  criminal  responsibility;  he 
can,  with  an  empty  purse,  go  to  prison  or  to  death.  But  in  the 
ordinary  sphere  of  everyday  morality  that  large  penalty  is  not 
required  of  him;  if  he  goes  against  the  wishes  of  his  family  or 


408  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   SEX. 

his  friends  or  his  parish,  they  may  turn  their  backs  on  him  but 
they  cannot  usually  demand  against  him  the  last  penalties  of  the 
law.  He  can  exert  his  own  personal  responsibility,  he  can  freely 
choose  to  go  his  own  way  and  to  maintain  himself  in  it  before 
his  fellowmen  on  one  condition,  that  he  is  able  to  pay  for  it. 
His  personal  responsibility  has  little  or  no  meaning  except  in  so 
far  as  it  is  also  economic  independence. 

In  civilized  societies  as  they  attain  maturity,  the  women  tend 
to  acquire  a  greater  and  greater  degree  alike  of  moral  respon- 
sibility and  economic  independence.  Any  freedom  and  seeming 
equality  of  women,  even  when  it  actually  assumes  the  air  of 
superiority,  which  is  not  so  based,  is  unreal.  It  is  only  on 
sufferance;  it  is  the  freedom  accorded  to  the  child,  because  it 
asks  for  it  so  prettily  or  may  scream  if  it  is  refused.  This  is 
merely  parasitism.1  The  basis  of  economic  independence  ensures 
a  more  real  freedom.  Even  in  societies  which  by  law  and  custom 
hold  women  in  strict  subordination,  the  woman  who  happens  to 
be  placed  in  possession  of  property  enjoys  a  high  degree  alike  of 
independence  and  of  responsibility.2  The  growth  of  a  high 
civilization  seems  indeed  to  be  so  closely  identified  with  the 
economic  freedom  and  independence  of  women  that  it  is  diffi- 
cult to  say  which  is  cause  and  which  effect.  Herodotus,  in  his 
fascinating  account  of  Egypt,  a  land  which  he  regarded  as 
admirable  beyond  all  other  lands,  noted  with  surprise  that,  totally 
unlike  the  fashion  of  Greece,  women  left  the  men  at  home  to  the 
management  of  the  loom  and  went  to  market  to  transact  the 

1  Olive  Schreiner  has  especially  emphasized  the  evils  of  parasitism 
for  women.  "The  increased  wealth  of  the  male,"  she  remarks  ("The 
Woman's  Movement  of  Our  Day,"  Harper's  Bazaar,  Jan.,  1902),  "no  more 
of  necessity  benefits  and  raises  the  female  upon  whom  he  expends  it,  than 
the  increased  wealth  of  his  mistress  necessarily  benefits,  mentally  or 
physically,  a  poodle,  because  she  can  then  give  him  a  down  cushion  in 
place  of  one  of  feathers,  and  chicken  in  place  of  beef."  Olive  Schreiner 
believes  that  feminine  parasitism  is  a  danger  which  really  threatens 
society  at  the  present  time,  and  that  if  not  averted  "the  whole  body  of 
females  in  civilized  societies  must  sink  into  a  state  of  more  or  less 
absolute  dependence." 

2  In  Rome  and  in  Japan,  Hobhouse  notes  {op.  cit.,  vol.  i,  pp,  169, 
176),  the  patriarchal  system  reached  its  fullest  extension,  yet  the  laws 
of  both  these  countries  placed  the  husband  in  a  position  of  practical  sub- 
jugation to  a  rich  wife. 


SEXUAL    MORALITY.  409 

business  of  commerce.1  It  is  the  economic  factor  in  social  life 
which  secures  the  moral  responsibility  of  women  and  which  chiefly 
determines  the  position  of  the  wife  in  relation  to  her  husband.2 
In  this  respect  in  its  late  stages  civilization  returns  to  the  same 
point  it  had  occupied  at  the  beginning,  when,  as  has  already  been 
noted,  we  find  greater  equality  with  men  and  at  the  same  time 
greater  economic  independence.3 

In  all  the  leading  modern  civilized  countries,  for  a  century 
past,  custom  and  law  have  combined  to  give  an  ever  greater 
economic  independence  to  women.  In  some  respects  England 
took  the  lead  by  inaugurating  the  great  industrial  movement 
which  slowly  swept  women  into  its  ranks,4  and  made  inevitable 
the  legal  changes  which,  by  1882,  insured  to  a  married  woman 
the  possession  of  her  own  earnings.  The  same  movement,  with 
its  same  consequences;,  is  going  on  elsewhere.  In  the  United 
States,  just  as  in  England,  there  is  a  vast  army  of  five  million 
women,  rapidly  increasing,  who  earn  their  own  living,  and  their 
position  in  relation  to  men  workers  is  even  better  than  in  Eng- 
land. In  France  from  twenty-five  to  seventy-five  per  cent,  of  the 
workers  in  most  of  the  chief  industries — the  liberal  professions, 


i  Herodotus,  Bk.  ii,  Ch.  XXXV.  Herodotus  noted  that  it  was  the 
woman  and  not  the  man  on  whom  the  responsibility  for  supporting  aged 
parents  rested.  That  alone  involved  a  very  high  economic  position  of 
women.  It  is  not  surprising  that  to  some  observers,  as  to  Diodorus 
Siculus,  it  seemed  that  the  Egyptian  woman  was  mistress  over  her 
husband. 

2B.obhouse  (loc.  cit.),  Hale,  and  also  Grosse,  believe  that  good 
economic  position  of  a  people  involves  high  position  of  women.  Wester  - 
marek  (Moral  Ideas,  vol.  i,  p.  661),  here  in  agreement  with  Olive 
Schreiner,  thinks  this  statement  cannot  be  accepted  without  modification, 
though  agreeing  that  agricultural  life  has  a  good  effect  on  woman's  posi- 
tion, because  they  themselves  become  actively  engaged  in  it.  A  good 
economic  position  has  no  real  effect  in  raising  woman's  position,  unless 
women  themselves  take  a  real  and  not  merely  parasitic  part  in  it. 

3  Westermarck  (Moral  Ideas,  vol.  i,  Ch.  XXVI,  vol.  ii,  p.  29)  gives 
numerous  references  with  regard  to  the  considerable  proprietary  and 
other  privileges  of  women  among  savages  which  tend  to  be  lost  at  a  some- 
what higher  stage  of  culture. 

4  The  steady  rise  in  the  proportion  of  women  among  English 
workers  in  machine  industries  began  in  1851.  There  are  now,  it  is 
estimated,  three  and  a  half  million  women  employed  in  industrial  occu- 
pations, beside  a  million  and  a  half  domestic  servants.  (See  for  details, 
James  Haslam,  in  a  series  of  papers  in  the  Englishwoman,  1909.) 


410  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   SEX. 

commerce,  agriculture,  factory  industries — are  women,  and  in 
some  of  the  very  largest,  such  as  home  industries  and  textile 
industries,  more  women  are  employed  than  men.  In  Japan,  it  is 
said,  three-fifths  of  the  factory  workers  are  women,  and  all  the 
textile  industries  are  in  the  hands  of  women.1  This  movement  is 
the  outward  expression  of  the  modern  conception  of  personal 
rights,  personal  moral  worth,  and  personal  responsibility,  which, 
as  Hobhouse  has  remarked,  has  compelled  women  to  take  their 
lives  into  their  own  hands,  and  has  at  the  same  time  rendered  the 
ancient  marriage  laws  an  anachronism,  and  the  ancient  ideals  of 
feminine  innocence  shrouded  from  the  world  a  mere  piece  of  false 
sentiment.2 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  entrance  of  women  into  the  field  of 
industrial  work,  in  rivalry  with  men  and  under  somewhat  the  same  con- 
ditions as  men,  raises  serious  questions  of  another  order.  The  general 
tendency  of  civilization  towards  the  economic  independence  and  the  moral 
responsibility  of  women  is  unquestionable.  But  it  is  by  no  means 
absolutely  clear  that  it  is  best  for  women,  and,  therefore,  for  the  com- 
munity, that  women  should  exercise  all  the  ordinary  avocations  and 
professions  of  men  on  the  same  level  as  men.  Not  only  have  the  condi- 
tions of  the  avocations  and  professions  developed  in  accordance  with  the 
special  aptitudes  of  men,  but  the  fact  that  the  sexual  processes  by  which 
the  race  is  propagated  demand  an  incomparably  greater  expenditure  of 
time  and  energy  on  the  part  of  women  than  of  men,  precludes  women  in 
the  mass  from  devoting  themselves  so  exclusively  as  men  to  industrial 
work.  For  some  biologists,  indeed,  it  seems  clear  that  outside  the  home 
and  the  school  women  should  not  work  at  all.  "Any  nation  that  works 
its  women  is  damned,"  says  Woods  Hutchinson  (The  Gospel  According 
to  Darwin,  p.  199 ) .  That  view  is  extreme.  Yet  from  the  economic  side, 
also,  Hobson,  in  summing  up  this  question,  regards  the  tendency  of 
machine-industry  to  drive  women  away  from  the  home  as  "a  tendency 
antagonistic  to  civilization."  The  neglect  of  the  home,  he  states,  is,  "on 
the  whole,  the  worst  injury  modern  industry  has  inflicted  on  our  lives, 
and  it  is  difficult  to  see  how  it  can  be  compensated  by  any  increase  of 
material  products.  Factory  life  for  women,  save  in  extremely  rare  cases, 
saps  the  physical  and  moral  health  of  the  family.  The  exigencies  of 
factory  life  are  inconsistent  with  the  position  of  a  good  mother,  a  good 


1  See,  e.g.,  J.  A.  Hobson,  The  Evolution  of  Modern  Capitalism,  sec- 
ond edition,  1907,  Ch.  XII,  "Women  in  Modern  Industry." 

2  Hobhouse,  op.  cit.,  vol.  i,  p.  228. 


SEXUAL    MORALITY.  411 

wife,  or  the  maker  of  a  home.  Save  in  extreme  circumstances,  no 
increase  of  the  family  wage  can  balance  these  losses,  whose  values  stand 
upon  a  higher  qualitative  level"  (J.  A.  Hobson,  Evolution  of  Modern 
Capitalism,  Ch.  XII;  cf.  what  has  been  said  in  Ch.  I  of  the  present 
volume ) .  It  is  now  beginning  to  be  recognized  that  the  early  pioneers 
of  the  "woman's  movement"  in  working  to  remove  the  "subjection  of 
woman"  were  still  dominated  by  the  old  ideals  of  that  subjection,  accord- 
ing to  which  the  masculine  is  in  all  main  respects  the  superior  sex. 
Whatever  was  good  for  man,  they  thought,  must  be  equally  good  for 
woman.  That  has  been  the  source  of  all  that  was  unbalanced  and 
unstable,  sometimes  both  a  little  pathetic  and  a  little  absurd,  in  the  old 
"woman's  movement."  There  was  a  failure  to  perceive  that,  first  of  all, 
women  must  claim  their  right  to  their  own  womanhood  as  mothers  of 
the  race,  and  thereby  the  supreme  lawgivers  in  the  sphere  of  sex  and 
the  large  part  of  life  dependent  on  sex.  This  special  position  of  woman 
seems  likely  to  require  a  readjustment  of  economic  conditions  to  their 
needs,  though  it  is  not  likely  that  such  readjustment  would  be  permitted 
to  affect  their  independence  or  their  responsibility.  We  have  had,  as 
Madame  Juliette  Adam  has  put  it,  the  rights  of  men  sacrificing  women, 
followed  by  the  rights  of  women  sacrificing  the  child ;  that  must  be  fol- 
lowed by  the  rights  of  the  child  reconstituting  the  family.  It  has 
already  been  necessary  to  touch  on  this  point  in  the  first  chapter  of  this 
volume,  and  it  will  again  be  necessary  in  the  last  chapter. 

The  question  as  to  the  method  by  which  the  economic 
independence  of  women  will  be  completely  insured,  and  the  part 
which  the  community  may  be  expected  to  take  in  insuring  it, 
on  the  ground  of  woman's  special  child-bearing  functions,  is 
from  the  present  point  of  view  subsidiary.  There  can  be  no 
doubt,  however,  as  to  the  reality  of  the  movement  in  that 
direction,  whatever  doubt  there  may  be  as  to  the  final  adjustment 
of  the  details.  It  is  only  necessary  in  this  place  to  touch  on 
some  of  the  general  and  more  obvious  respects  in  which  the 
growth  of  woman's  responsibility  is  affecting  sexual  morality. 

The  first  and  most  obvious  way  in  which  the  sense  of  moral 
responsibility  works  is  in  an  insistence  on  reality  in  the  relation- 
ships of  sex.  Moral  irresponsibility  has  too  often  combined 
with  economic  dependence  to  induce  a  woman  to  treat  the 
sexual  event  in  her  life  which  is  biologically  of  most  fateful 
gravity  as  a  merely  gay  and  trivial  event,  at  the  most  an  event 
which  has  given  her  a  triumph  over  her  rivals  and  over  the 


412  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

superior  male,  who,,  on  his  part,  willingly  condescends,  for  the 
moment,  to  assume  the  part  of  the  vanquished.  "Gallantry  to 
the  ladies,"  we  are  told  of  the  hero  of  the  greatest  and  most 
typical  of  English  novels,  "was  among  his  principles  of  honor, 
and  he  held  it  as  much  incumbent  on  him  to  accept  a  challenge 
to  love  as  if  it  had  been  a  challenge  to  fight;"  he  heroically 
goes  home  for  the  night  with  a  lady  of  title  he  meets  at  a 
masquerade,  though  at  the  time  very  much  in  love  with  the  girl 
whom  he  eventually  marries.1  The  woman  whose  power  lies 
only  in  her  charms,  and  who  is  free  to  allow  the  burden  of  respon- 
sibility to  fall  on  a  man's  shoulder,2  could  lightly  play  the  sedu- 
cing part,  and  thereby  exert  independence  and  authority  in  the 
only  shapes  open  to  her.  The  man  on  his  part,  introducing  the 
misplaced  idea  of  "honor"  into  the  field  from  which  the  natural 
idea  of  responsibility  has  been  banished,  is  prepared  to  descend 
at  the  lady's  bidding  into  the  arena,  according  to  the  old  legend, 
and  rescue  the  glove,  even  though  he  afterwards  flings  it  con- 
temptuously in  her  face.  The  ancient  conception  of  gallantry, 
which  Tom  Jones  so  well  embodies,  is  the  direct  outcome  of  a 
system  involving  the  moral  irresponsibility  and  economic  de- 
pendence of  women,  and  is  as  opposed  to  the  conceptions,  prevail- 
ing in  the  earlier  and  later  civilized  stages,  of  approximate  sexual 
equality  as  it  is  to  the  biological  traditions  of  natural  courtship 
in  the  world  generally. 

In  controlling  her  own  sexual  life,  and  in  realizing  that  her 
responsibility  for  such  control  can  no  longer  be  shifted  on  to  the 
shoulders  of  the  other  sex,  women  will  also  indirectly  affect 
the  sexual  lives  of  men,  much  as  men  already  affect  the 
sexual  lives  of  women.  In  what  ways  that  influence  will  in  the 
main  be  exerted  it  is  still  premature  to  say.  According  to  some, 
just  as  formerly  men  bought  their  wives  and  demanded  pre- 
nuptial  virginity  in  the  article  thus  purchased,  so  nowadays, 
among  the  better  classes,  women  are  able  to  buy  their  husbands, 

1  Fielding,  Tom  Jones,  Bk.  iii,  Ch.  VII. 

2  Even  the  Church  to  some  extent  adopted  this  allotment  of  the 
responsibility,  and  "solicitation,"  i.e.,  the  sin  of  a  confessor  in  seducing 
his  female  penitent,  is  constantly  treated  as  exclusively  the  confessor's 


SEXUAL    MORALITY.  413 

and  in  their  turn  are  disposed  to  demand  continence.1  That, 
however,  is  too  simple-minded  a  way  of  viewing  the  question. 
It  is  enough  to  refer  to  the  fact  that  women  are  not  attracted 
to  virginal  innocence  in  men  and  that  they  frequently  have  good 
ground  for  viewing  such  innocence  with  suspicion.2  Yet  it  may 
well  be  believed  that  women  will  more  and  more  prefer  to  exert 
a  certain  discrimination  in  the  approval  of  their  husbands'  past 
lives.  However  instinctively  a  woman  may  desire  that  her  hus- 
band shall  be  initiated  in  the  art  of  making  love  to  her,  she  may 
often  well  doubt  whether  the  finest  initiation  is  to  be  secured  from 
the  average  prostitute.  Prostitution,  as  we  have  seen,  is  ulti- 
mately as  incompatible  with  complete  sexual  responsibility  as  is 
the  patriarchal  marriage  system  with  which  it  has  been  so  closely 
associated.  It  is  an  arrangement  mainly  determined  by  the 
demands  of  men,  to  whatever  extent  it  may  have  incidentally 
subserved  various  needs  of  women.  Men  arranged  that  one  group 
of  women  should  be  set  apart  to  minister  exclusively  to  their 
sexual  necessities,  while  another  group  should  be  brought  up  in 
asceticism  as  candidates  for  the  privilege  of  ministering  to  their 
household  and  family  necessities.  That  this  has  been  in  many 
respects  a  most  excellent  arrangement  is  sufficiently  proved  by 
the  fact  that  it  has  nourished  for  so  long  a  period,  notwithstand- 
ing the  influences  that  are  antagonistic  to  it.  But  it  is  obviously 
only  possible  during  a  certain  stage  of  civilization  and  in  asso- 
ciation with  a  certain  social  organization.  It  is  not  completely 
congruous  with  a  democratic  stage  of  civilization  involving  the 
economic  independence  and  the  sexual  responsibility  of  both 
sexes  alike  in  all  social  classes.  It  is  possible  that  women  may 
begin  to  realize  this  fact  earlier  than  men. 

It  is  also  believed  by  many  that  women  will  realize  that  a 
high  degree  of  moral  responsibility  is  not  easily  compatible  with 
the  practice  of  dissimulation  and  that  economic  independence 
will  deprive  deceit — which  is  always  the  resort  of  the  weak — of 

1  Adolf  Gerson,  Sexual-Probleme,  Sept.,  1908,  p.  547. 

2  It  has  already  been  necessary  to  refer  to  the  unfortunate  results 
which  may  follow  the  ignorance  of  husbands  (see,  e.g.,  "The  Sexual 
Impulse  in  Women,"  vol.  iii  of  these  Studies),  and  will  be  necessary 
again  in  Ch.  XI  of  the  present  volume. 


414  PSYCHOLOGY   OF    SEX. 

whatever  moral  justification  it  may  possess.  Here,  however,  it  is 
necessary  to  speak  with  caution  or  we  may  be  unjust  to  women. 
It  must  be  remarked  that  in  the  sphere  of  sex  men  also  are  often 
the  weak,  and  are  therefore  apt  to  resort  to  the  refuge  of  the  weak. 
With  the  recognition  of  that  fact  we  may  also  recognize  that 
deception  in  women  has  been  the  cause  of  much  of  the  age-long 
blunders  of  the  masculine  mind  in  the  contemplation  of  feminine 
ways.  Men  have  constantly  committed  the  double  error  of  over- 
looking the  dissimulation  of  women  and  of  over-estimating  it. 
This  fact  has  always  served  to  render  more  difficult  still  the 
inevitably  difficult  course  of  women  through  the  devious  path  of 
sexual  behavior.  Pepys,  who  represents  so  vividly  and  so  frankly 
the  vices  and  virtues  of  the  ordinary  masculine  mind,  tells  how 
one  day  when  he  called  to  see  Mrs.  Martin  her  sister  Doll  went 
out  for  a  bottle  of  wine  and  came  back  indignant  because  a 
Dutchman  had  pulled  her  into  a  stable  and  tumbled  and  tossed 
her.  Pepys  having  been  himself  often  permitted  to  take 
liberties  with  her,  it  seemed  to  him  that  her  indignation  with 
the  Dutchman  was  "the  best  instance  of  woman's  falseness  in  the 
world."1  He  assumes  without  question  that  a  woman  who  has 
accorded  the  privilege  of  familiarity  to  a  man  she  knows  and,  one 
hopes,  respects,  would  be  prepared  to  accept  complacently  the 
brutal  attentions  of  the  first  drunken  stranger  she  meets  in  the 
street. 

It  was  the  assumption  of  woman's  falseness  which  led  the 
ultra-masculine  Pepys  into  a  sufficiently  absurd  error.  At  this 
point,  indeed,  we  encounter  what  has  seemed  to  some  a  serious 
obstacle  to  the  full  moral  responsibility  of  women.  Dissimula- 
tion, Lombroso  and  Ferrero  argue,  is  in  woman  "almost  physio- 
logical," and  they  give  various  grounds  for  this  conclusion.2 
The  theologians,  on  their  side,  have  reached  a  similar  conclusion. 
"A  confessor  must  not  immediately  believe  a  woman's  words," 
says  Father  Gury,  "for  women  are  habitually  inclined  to  lie."3 


i  Pepys,  Diary,  ed.  Wheatley,  vol.  vii,  p.  10. 

2  Lombroso  and  Ferrero,  La  Donna  Delinquente ;  cf.  Havelock  Ellis, 
Man  and  Woman,  fourth  edition,  p.  196. 

3  Gury,  Theologie  Morale,  art.  381. 


SEXUAL    MORALITY.  415 

This  tendency,  which  seems  to  be  commonly  believed  to  affect 
women  as  a  sex,  however  free  from  it  a  vast  number  of  individual 
women  are,  may  be  said,  and  with  truth,  to  be  largely  the  result 
of  the  subjection  of  women  and  therefore  likely  to  disappear  as 
that  subjection  disappears.  In  so  far,  however,  as  it  is  "almost 
physiological/'  and  based  on  radical  feminine  characters,  such 
as  modesty,  affectability,  and  sympathy,  which  have  an  organic 
basis  in  the  feminine  constitution  and  can  therefore  never 
altogether  be  changed,  feminine  dissimulation  seems  scarcely 
likely  to  disappear.  The  utmost  that  can  be  expected  is  that 
it  should  be  held  in  check  by  the  developed  sense  of  moral  respon- 
sibility, and,  being  reduced  to  its  simply  natural  proportions, 
become  recognizably  intelligible. 

It  is  unnecessary  to  remark  that  there  can  be  no  question  here  as 
to  any  inherent  moral  superiority  of  one  sex  over  the  other.  The  answer 
to  that  question  was  well  stated  many  years  ago  by  one  of  the  most 
subtle  moralists  of  love.  "Taken  altogether,"  concluded  Senancour  (De 
V Amour,  vol.  ii,  p.  85 ) ,  "we  have  no  reason  to  assert  the  moral  super- 
iority of  either  sex.  Both  sexes,  with  their  errors  and  their  good  inten- 
tions, very  equally  fulfil  the  ends  of  nature.  We  may  well  believe  that 
in  either  of  the  two  divisions  of  the  human  species  the  sum  of  evil  and 
that  of  good  are  about  equal.  If,  for  instance,  as  regards  love,  we  oppose 
the  visibly  licentious  conduct  of  men  to  the  apparent  reserve  of  women, 
it  would  be  a  vain  valuation,  for  the  number  of  faults  committed  by 
women  with  men  is  necessarily  the  same  as  that  of  men  with  women. 
There  exist  among  us  fewer  scrupulous  men  than  perfectly  honest  women, 
but  it  is  easy  to  see  how  the  balance  is  restored.  If  this  question  of  the 
moral  preeminence  of  one  sex  over  the  other  were  not  insoluble  it  would 
still  remain  very  complicated  with  reference  to  the  whole  of  the  species, 
or  even  the  whole  of  a  nation,  and  any  dispute  here  seems  idle." 

This  conclusion  is  in  accordance  with  the  general  compensatory  and 
complementary  relationship  of  women  to  men  (see,  e.g.,  Havelock  Ellis, 
Man  and  Woman,  fourth  edition,  especially  pp.  448  et  seq.). 

In  a  recent  symposium  on  the  question  whether  women  are  morally 
inferior  to  men,  with  special  reference  to  aptitude  for  loyalty  ( La  Revue, 
Jan.  1,  1909),  to  which  various  distinguished  French  men  and  women 
contributed  their  opinions,  some  declared  that  women  are  usually 
superior;  others  regarded  it  as  a  question  of  difference  rather  than  of 
superiority  or  inferiority;  all  were  agreed  that  when  they  enjoy  the 
same  independence  as  men,  women  are  quite  as  loyal  as  men. 


416  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   SEX. 

It  is  undoubtedly  true  that — partly  as  a  result  of  ancient 
traditions  and  education,  partly  of  genuine  feminine  character- 
istics— many  women  are  diffident  as  to  their  right  to  moral 
responsibility  and  unwilling  to  assume  it.  And  an  attempt  is 
made  to  justify  their  attitude  by  asserting  that  woman's  part  in 
life  is  naturally  that  of  self-sacrifice,  or,  to  put  the  statement  in  a 
somewhat  more  technical  form,  that  women  are  naturally  maso- 
chistic; ano!  that  there  is,  as  Krafft-Ebing  argues,  a  natural 
"sexual  subjection"  of  woman.  It  is  by  no  means  clear  that  this 
statement  is  absolutely  true,  and  if  it  were  true  it  would  not 
serve  to  abolish  the  moral  responsibility  of  women. 

Bloch  (Beitrage  zur  Aetiologie  der  Psychopathia  Seocualis,  Part  II, 
p.  178),  in  agreement  with  Eulenburg,  energetically  denies  that  there  is 
any  such  natural  "sexual  subjection"  of  women,  regarding  it  as  artifi- 
cially produced,  the  result  of  the  socially  inferior  position  of  women,  and 
arguing  that  such  subjection  is  in  much  higher  degree  a  physiological 
characteristic  of  men  than  of  women.  (It  has  been  necessary  to  discuss 
this  question  in  dealing  with  "Love  and  Pain"  in  the  third  volume  of 
these  Studies. )  It  seems  certainly  clear  that  the  notion  that  women  are 
especially  prone  to  self-sacrifice  has  little  biological  validity.  Self- 
sacrifice  by  compulsion,  whether  physical  or  moral  compulsion,  is  not 
worthy  of  the  name;  when  it  is  deliberate  it  is  simply  the  sacrifice  of 
a  lesser  good  for  the  sake  of  a  greater  good.  Doubtless  a  man  who  eats 
a  good  dinner  may  be  said  to  "sacrifice"  his  hunger.  Even  within  the 
sphere  of  traditional  morality  a  woman  who  sacrifices  her  "honor"  for 
the  sake  of  her  love  to  a  man  has,  by  her  "sacrifice,"  gained  something 
that  she  values  more.  "What  a  triumph  it  is  to  a  woman,"  a  woman 
has  said,  "to  give  pleasure  to  a  man  she  loves!"  And  in  a  morality  on 
a  sound  biological  basis  no  "sacrifice"  is  here  called  for.  It  may  rather 
be  said  that  the  biological  laws  of  courtship  fundamentally  demand  self- 
sacrifice  of  the  male  rather  than  of  the  female.  Thus  the  lioness,  accord- 
ing to  Gerard  the  lion-hunter,  gives  herself  to  the  most  vigorous  of  her 
lion  wooers;  she  encourages  them  to  fight  among  themselves  for 
superiority,  lying  on  her  belly  to  gaze  at  the  combat  and  lashing  her 
tail  with  delight.  Every  female  is  wooed  by  many  males,  but  she  only 
accepts  one;  it  is  not  the  female  who  is  called  upon  for  erotic  self- 
saerifiee,  but  the  male.  That  is  indeed  part  of  the  divine  compensation 
of  Nature,  for  since  the  heavier  part  of  the  burden  of  sex  rests  on  the 
female,  it  is  fitting  that  she  should  be  less  called  upon  for  renunciation. 


SEXUAL    MORALITY.  417 

It  thus  seems  probable  that  the  increase  of  moral  respon- 
sibility may  tend  to  make  a  woman's  conduct  more  intelligible  to 
others  ;2  it  will  in  any  case  certainly  tend  to  make  it  less  the  con- 
cern of  others.  This  is  emphatically  the  case  as  regards  the  rela- 
tions of  sex.  In  the  past  men  have  been  invited  to  excel  in  many 
forms  of  virtue ;  only  one  virtue  has  been  open  to  women.  That 
is  no  longer  possible.  To  place  upon  a  woman  the  main  respon- 
sibility for  her  own  sexual  conduct  is  to  deprive  that  conduct  of 
its  conspicuously  public  character  as  a  virtue  or  a  vice.  Sexual 
union,  for  a  woman  as  much  as  for  a  man,  is  a  physiological 
fact;  it  may  also  be  a  spiritual  fact;  but  it  is  not  a  social  act. 
It  is,  on  the  contrary,  an  act  which,  beyond  all  other  acts, 
demands  retirement  and  mystery  for  its  accomplishment.  That 
indeed  is  a  general  human,  almost  zoological,  fact.  Moreover, 
this  demand  of  mystery  is  more  especially  made  by  woman  in 
virtue  of  her  greater  modesty  which,  we  have  found  reason  to 
believe,  has  a  biological  basis.  It  is  not  until  a  child  is  born 
or  conceived  that  the  community  has  any  right  to  interest  itself 
in  the  sexual  acts  of  its  members.  The  sexual  act  is  of  no  more 
concern  to  the  community  than  any  other  private  physiological 
act.  It  is  an  impertinence,  if  not  an  outrage,  to  seek  to  inquire 
into  it.  But  the  birth  of  a  child  is  a  social  act.  Not  what  goes 
into  the  womb  but  what  comes  out  of  it  concerns  society.  The 
community  is  invited  to  receive  a  new  citizen.  It  is  entitled  to 
demand  that  that  citizen  shall  be  worthy  of  a  place  in  its  midst 
and  that  he  shall  be  properly  introduced  by  a  responsible  father 
and  a  responsible  mother.  The  whole  of  sexual  morality,  as  Ellen 
Key  has  said,  revolves  round  the  child. 

At  this  final  point  in  our  discussion  of  sexual  morality  we 
may  perhaps  be  able  to  realize  the  immensity  of  the  change  which 
has  been  involved  by  the  development  in  women  of  moral  respon- 
sibility. So  long  as  responsibility  was  denied  to  women,  so  long 
as  a  father  or  a  husband,  backed  up  by  the  community,  held  him- 


1  "Men  will  not  learn  what  women  are,"  remarks  Rosa  Mayreder 
(Zur  Kritik  der  Weiblichkeit,  p.  199),  "until  they  have  left  off  prescrib- 
ing what  they  ought  to  be." 


418  PSYCHOLOGY  OP   SEX. 

self  responsible  for  a  woman's  sexual  behavior,  for  her  "virtue," 
it  was  necessary  that  the  whole  of  sexual  morality  should  revolve 
around  the  entrance  to  the  vagina.  It  became  absolutely  essential 
to  the  maintenance  of  morality  that  all  eyes  in  the  community 
should  be  constantly  directed  on  to  that  point,  and  the  whole 
marriage  law  had  to  be  adjusted  accordingly.  That  is  no  longer 
possible.  When  a  woman  assumes  her  own  moral  responsibility, 
in  sexual  as  in  other  matters,  it  becomes  not  only  intolerable  but 
meaningless  for  the  community  to  pry  into  her  most  intimate 
physiological  or  spiritual  acts.  She  is  herself  directly  responsible 
to  society  as  soon  as  she  performs  a  social  act,  and  not  before. 

In  relation  to  the  fact  of  maternity  the  realization  of  all 
that  is  involved  in  the  new  moral  responsibility  of  women  is 
especially  significant.  Under  a  system  of  morality  by  which  a 
man  is  left  free  to  accept  the  responsibility  for  his  sexual  acts 
while  a  woman  is  not  equally  free  to  do  the  like,  a  premium  is 
placed  on  sexual  acts  which  have  no  end  in  procreation,  and  a 
penalty  is  placed  on  the  acts  which  lead  to  procreation.  The 
reason  is  that  it  is  the  former  class  of  acts  in  which  men  find 
chief  gratification;  it  is  the  latter  class  in  which  women  find 
chief  gratification.  For  the  tragic  part  of  the  old  sexual  morality 
in  its  bearing  on  women  was  that  while  it  made  men  alone 
morally  responsible  for  sexual  acts  in  which  both  a  man  and  a 
woman  took  part,  women  were  rendered  both  socially  and  legally 
incapable  of  availing  themselves  of  the  fact  of  masculine  respon- 
sibility unless  they  had  fulfilled  conditions  which  men  had  laid 
down  for  them,  and  yet  refrained  from  imposing  upon  themselves. 
The  act  of  sexual  intercourse,  being  the  sexual  act  in  which  men 
found  chief  pleasure,  was  under  all  circumstances  an  act  of  little 
social  gravity ;  the  act  of  bringing  a  child  into  the  world,  which 
is  for  women  the  most  massively  gratifying  of  all  sexual  acts,  was 
counted  a  crime  unless  the  mother  had  before  fulfilled  the  con- 
ditions demanded  by  man.  That  was  perhaps  the  most  unfor- 
tunate and  certainly  the  most  unnatural  of  the  results  of  the 
patriarchal  regulation  of  society.  It  has  never  existed  in  any 
great  State  where  women  have  possessed  some  degree  of  regula- 
tive power. 


SEXUAL    MORALITY.  419 

It  has,  of  course,  been  said  by  abstract  theorists  that  women  have 
the  matter  in  their  own  hands.  They  must  never  love  a  man  until  they 
have  safely  locked  him  up  in  the  legal  bonds  of  matrimony.  Such  an 
argument  is  absolutely  futile,  for  it  ignores  the  fact  that,  while  love  and 
even  monogamy  are  natural,  legal  marriage  is  merely  an  external  form, 
with  a  very  feeble  power  of  subjugating  natural  impulses,  except  when 
those  impulses  are  weak,  and  no  power  at  all  of  subjugating  them  perma- 
nently. Civilization  involves  the  growth  of  foresight,  and  of  self-control 
in  both  sexes;  but  it  is  foolish  to  attempt  to  place  on  these  fine 
and  ultimate  outgrowths  of  civilization  a  strain  which  they  could  never 
bear.  How  foolish  it  is  has  been  shown,  once  and  for  all,  by  Lea  in  his 
admirable  History  of  Sacerdotal  Celibacy. 

Moreover,  when  we  compare  the  respective  aptitudes  of  men  and 
women  in  this  particular  region,  it  must  be  remembered  that  men  possess 
a  greater  power  of  forethought  and  self-control  than  women,  notwith- 
standing the  modesty  and  reserve  of  women.  The  sexual  sphere  is 
immensely  larger  in  women,  so  that  when  its  activity  is  once  aroused 
it  is  much  more  difficult  to  master  or  control.  (The  reasons  were  set 
out  in  detail  in  the  discussion  of  "The  Sexual  Impulse  in  Women"  in 
volume  iii  of  these  Studies.)  It  is,  therefore,  unfair  to  women,  and 
unduly  favors  men,  when  too  heavy  a  premium  is  placed  on  forethought 
and  self-restraint  in  sexual  matters.  Since  women  play  the  predominant 
part  in  the  sexual  field  their  natural  demands,  rather  than  those  of  men, 
must  furnish  the  standard. 

With  the  realization  of  the  moral  responsibility  of  women 
the  natural  relations  of  life  spring  back  to  their  due  biological 
adjustment.  Motherhood  is  restored  to  its  natural  saeredness. 
It  becomes  the  concern  of  the  woman  herself,  and  not  of 
society  nor  of  any  individual,  to  determine  the  conditions  under 
which  the  child  shall  be  conceived.  Society  is  entitled  to  require 
that  the  father  shall  in  every  case  acknowledge  the  fact  of  his 
paternity,  but  it  must  leave  the  chief  responsibility  for  all  the 
circumstances  of  child-production  to  the  mother.  That  is  the 
point  of  view  which  is  now  gaining  ground  in  all  civilized  lands 
both  in  theory  and  in  practiceo1 

l  It  has  been  set  out,  for  instance,  by  Professor  Wahrmund  in  Ehe 
und  Eherecht,  190S.  I  need  scarcely  refer  again  to  the  writings  of  Ellen 
Key,  which  may  be  said  to  be  almost  epoch-making  in  their  significance, 
especially  (in  German  translation)  Ueber  Liebe  und  Ehe  (also  French 
translation),  and  (in  English  translation,  Putnam,  1909),  the  valuable, 
though  less  important  work,  The  Century  of  the  Child.  See  also  Edward 
Carpenter,  Love's  Coming  of  Age;  Eorel,  Die  Seoouelle  Frage  (English 
translation,  abridged,  The  Sexual  Question,  Pebman,  1908)  ;  Bloch, 
Sexualleben  unsere  Zeit  (English  translation,  The  Sexual  Life  of  Our 
Time,  Rebman,  1908)  ;  Helene  Stocker,  Die  Liebe  und  die  Frauen,  1906; 
and  Paul  Lapie,  La  Femme  dans  la  Famille,  1908. 


CHAPTER   X. 

MARRIAGE. 

The  Definition  of  Marriage — Marriage  Among  Animals — The  Pre- 
dominance of  Monogamy — The  Question  of  Group  Marriage — Monogamy 
a  Natural  Fact,  Not  Based  on  Human  Law — The  Tendency  to  Place  the 
Form  of  Marriage  Above  the  Fact  of  Marriage — The  History  of  Marriage 
— Marriage  in  Ancient  Rome — Germanic  Influence  on  Marriage — Bride- 
Sale — The  Ring — The  Influence  of  Christianity  on  Marriage — The  Great 
Extent  of  This  Influence — The  Sacrament  of  Matrimony — Origin  and 
Growth  of  the  Sacramental  Conception — The  Church  Made  Marriage  a 
Public  Act — Canon  Law — Its  Sound  Core — Its  Development — Its  Con- 
fusions and  Absurdities — Peculiarities  of  English  Marriage  Law — Influ- 
ence of  the  Reformation  on  Marriage — The  Protestant  Conception  of 
Marriage  as  a  Secular  Contract — The  Puritan  Reform  of  Marriage — 
Milton  as  the  Pioneer  of  Marriage  Reform — His  Views  on  Divorce — The 
Backward  Position  of  England  in  Marriage  Reform — Criticism  of  the 
English  Divorce  Law — Traditions  of  the  Canon  Law  Still  Persistent — 
The  Question  of  Damages  for  Adultery — Collusion  as  a  Bar  to  Divorce — 
Divorce  in  France,  Germany,  Austria,  Russia,  etc. — The  United  States — 
Impossibility  of  Deciding  by  Statute  the  Causes  for  Divorce — Divorce 
by  Mutual  Consent — Its  Origin  and  Development — Impeded  by  the  Tradi- 
tions of  Canon  Law — Wilhelm  von  Humboldt — Modern  Pioneer  Advocates 
of  Divorce  by  Mutual  Consent — The  Arguments  Against  Facility  of 
Divorce — The  Interests  of  the  Children — The  Protection  of , Women — The 
Present  Tendency  of  the  Divorce  Movement — Marriage  Not  a  Contract — 
The  Proposal  of  Marriage  for  a  Term  of  Years — Legal  Disabilities  and 
Disadvantages  in  the  Position  of  the  Husband  and  the  Wife — Marriage 
Not  a  Contract  But  a  Fact — Only  the  Non-Essentials  of  Marriage,  Not 
the  Essentials,  a  Proper  Matter  for  Contract — The  Legal  Recognition  of 
Marriage  as  a  Fact  Without  Any  Ceremony — Contracts  of  the  Person 
Opposed  to  Modern  Tendencies — The  Factor  of  Moral  Responsibility — 
Marriage  as  an  Ethical  Sacrament — Personal  Responsibility  Involves 
Freedom — Freedom  the  Best  Guarantee  of  Stability— False  Ideas  of 
Individualism — Modern  Tendency  of  Marriage — With  the  Birth  of  a, 
Child  Marriage  Ceases  to  be  a  Private  Concern — Every  Child  Must  Have 
a  Legal  Father  and  Mother— How  This  Can  be  Effected— The  Firm  Basis 
of  Monogamy — The  Question  of  Marriage  Variations — Such  Variations 

(420) 


MARRIAGE.  421 

Not  Inimical  to  Monogamy — The  Most  Common  Variations — The  Flexi- 
bility of  Marriage  Holds  Variations  in  Cheek —Marriage  Variations 
versus  Prostitution — Marriage  on  a  Reasonable  and  Humane  Basis — Sum- 
mary and  Conclusion. 

The  discussion  in  the  previous  chapter  of  the  nature  of 
sexual  morality,  with  the  brief  sketch  it  involved  of  the  direction 
in  which  that  morality  is  moving,  has  necessarily  left  many 
points  vague.  It  may  still  be  asked  what  definite  and  precise 
forms  sexual  unions  are  tending  to  take  among  us,  and  what 
relation  these  unions  bear  to  the  religious,  social,  and  legal 
traditions  we  have  inherited.  These  are  matters  about  which  a 
very  considerable  amount  of  uncertainty  seems  to  prevail,  for  it  is 
not  unusual  to  hear  revolutionary  or  eccentric  opinions  concern- 
ing them. 

Sexual  union,  involving  the  cohabitation,  temporary  or 
permanent,  of  two  or  more  persons,  and  having  for  one  of  its  chief 
ends  the  production  and  care  of  offspring,  is  commonly  termed 
marriage.  The  group  so  constituted  forms  a  family.  This  is 
the  sense  in  which  the  words  "marriage"  and  the  "family"  are 
most  properly  used,  whether  we  speak  of  animals  or  of  Man. 
There  is  thus  seen  to  be  room  for  variation  as  regards  both  the 
time  during  which  the  union  lasts,  and  the  number  of  individuals 
who  form  it,  the  chief  factor  in  the  determination  of  these  points 
being  the  interests  of  the  offspring.  In  actual  practice,  however, 
sexual  unions,  not  only  in  Man  but  among  the  higher  animals, 
tend  to  last  beyond  the  needs  of  the  offspring  of  a  single  season, 
while  the  fact  that  in  most  species  the  numbers  of  males  and 
females  are  approximately  equal  makes  it  inevitable  that  both 
among  animals  and  in  Man  the  family  is  produced  by  a  single 
sexual  couple,  that  is  to  say  that  monogamy  is,  with  however 
many  exceptions,  necessarily  the  fundamental  rule. 

It  will  thus  be  seen  that  marriage  centres  in  the  child,  and 
has  at  the  outset  no  reason  for  existence  apart  from  the  welfare 
of  the  offspring.  Among  those  animals  of  lowly  organization 
which  are  able  to  provide  for  themselves  from  the  beginning  of 
existence  there  is  no  family  and  no  need  for  marriage.  Among 
human  races,  when  sexual  unions  are  not  followed  by  offspring, 


422  PSYCHOLOGY   OF    SEX. 

there  may  be  other  reasons  for  the  continuance  of  the  union  but 
they  are  not  reasons  in  which  either  Nature  or  society  is  in  the 
slightest  degree  directly  concerned.  The  marriage  which  grew 
up  among  animals  by  heredity  on  the  basis  of  natural  selection, 
and  which  has  been  continued  by  the  lower  human  races  through 
custom  and  tradition,  by  the  more  civilized  races  through  the 
superimposed  regulative  influence  of  legal  institutions,  has  been 
marriage  for  the  sake  of  the  offspring.1  Even  in  civilized  races 
among  whom  the  proportion  of  sterile  marriages  is  large,  mar- 
riage tends  to  be  so  constituted  as  always  to  assume  the  pro- 
creation of  children  and  to  involve  the  permanence  required  by 
such  procreation. 

Among  birds,  which  from  the  point  of  view  of  erotic  development 
stand  at  the  head  of  the  animal  world,  monogamy  frequently  prevails 
(according  to  some  estimates  among  90  per  cent.),  and  unions  tend  to 
be  permanent;  there  is  an  approximation  to  the  same  condition  among 
some  of  the  higher  mammals,  especially  the  anthropoid  apes ;  thus  among 
gorillas  and  oran-utans  permanent  monogamic  marriages  take  place,  the 
young  sometimes  remaining  with  the  parents  to  the  age  of  six,  while 
any  approach  to  loose  behavior  on  the  part  of  the  wife  is  severely  pun- 
ished by  the  husband.  The  variations  that  occur  are  often  simply  mat- 
ters of  adaptation  to  circumstances;  thus,  according  to  J.  G.  Millais 
(Natural  History  of  British  Ducks,  pp.  8,  63),  the  Shoveler  duck,  though 
normally  monogamic,  will  become  polyandric  when  males  are  in  excess, 
the  two  males  being  in  constant  and  amicable  attendance  on  the  female 
without  signs  of  jealousy;  among  the  monogamic  mallards,  similarly, 
polygyny  and  polyandry  may  also  occur.  See  also  R.  W.  Shufeldt, 
"Mating  Among  Birds,"  American  Naturalist,  March,  1907;  for  mammal 
marriages,  a  valuable  paper  by  Robert  Miiller,  "Saugethierehen,"  Sexual- 
Probleme,  Jan.,  1909,  and  as  regards  the  general  prevalence  of  monogamy, 
Woods  Hutchinson,  "Animal  Marriage,"  Contemporary  Review,  Oct., 
1904,  and  Sept.,  1905. 

There  has  long  been  a  dispute  among  the  historians  of  marriage  as 
to  the  first  form  of  human  marriage.  Some  assume  a  primitive  promis- 
cuity gradually  modified  in  the  direction  of  monogamy;  others  argue 
that  man  began  where  the  anthropoid  apes  left  off,  and  that  monogamy 
has  prevailed,  on  the  whole,  throughout.     Both  these  opposed  views,  in 


1  Rosenthal,  of  Breslau,  from  the  legal  side,  goes  so  far  as  to  argue 
( "Grundf ragen  des  Eheproblems,"  Die  Neue  Generation,  Dec,  1908), 
that  the  intention  of  procreation  is  essential  to  the  conception  of  legal 
marriage. 


MARRIAGE.  423 

an  extreme  form,  seem  untenable,  and  the  truth  appears  to  lie  midway. 
It  has  been  shown  by  various  writers,  and  notably  Westermarck  (History 
of  Human  Marriage,  Chs.  IV-VI),  that  there  is  no  sound  evidence  in 
favor  of  primitive  promiscuity,  and  that  at  the  present  day  there  are 
few,  if  any,  savage  peoples  living  in  genuine  unrestricted  sexual  promis- 
cuity. This  theory  of  a  primitive  promiscuity  seems  to  have  been 
suggested,  as  J.  A.  Godfrey  has  pointed  out  (Science  of  Sex,  p.  112),  by 
the  existence  in  civilized  societies  of  promiscuous  prostitution,  though 
this  kind  of  promiscuity  was  really  the  result,  rather  than  the  origin,  of 
marriage.  On  the  other  hand,  it  can  scarcely  be  said  that  there  is  any 
convincing  evidence  of  primitive  strict  monogamy  beyond  the  assumption 
that  early  man  continued  the  sexual  habits  of  the  anthropoid  apes.  It 
would  seem  probable,  however,  that  the  great  forward  step  involved  in 
passing  from  ape  to  man  was  associated  with  a  change  in  sexual  habits 
involving  the  temporary  adoption  of  a  more  complex  system  than 
monogamy.  It  is  difficult  to  see  in  what  other  social  field  than  that  of 
sex  primitive  man  could  find  exercise  for  the  developing  intellectual  and 
moral  aptitudes,  the  subtle  distinctions  and  moral  restraints,  which  the 
strict  monogamy  practiced  by  animals  could  afford  no  scope  for.  It  is 
also  equally  difficult  to  see  on  what  basis  other  than  that  of  a  more 
closely  associated  sexual  system  the  combined  and  harmonious  efforts 
needed  for  social  progress  could  have  developed.  It  is  probable  that  at 
least  one  of  the  motives  for  exogamy,  or  marriage  outside  the  group,  is 
(as  was  probably  first  pointed  out  by  St.  Augustine  in  his  De  Civitate 
Dei)  the  need  of  creating  a  larger  social  circle,  and  so  facilitating  social 
activities  and  progress.  Exactly  the  same  end  is  effected  by  a  complex 
marriage  system  binding  a  large  number  of  people  together  by  common 
interests.  The  strictly  small  and  confined  monogamic  family,  however 
excellently  it  subserved  the  interests  of  the  offspring,  contained  no 
promise  of  a  wider  social  progress.  We  see  this  among  both  ants  and 
bees,  who  of  all  animals,  have  attained  the  highest  social  organization; 
their  progress  was  only  possible  through  a  profound  modification  of  the 
systems  of  sexual  relationship.  As  Espinas  said  many  years  ago  (in  his 
suggestive  work,  Des  Societes  Animates)  :  "The  cohesion  of  the  family 
and  the  probabilities  for  the  birth  of  societies  are  inverse."  Or,  as 
Schurtz  more  recently  pointed  out,  although  individual  marriage  has  pre- 
vailed more  or  less  from  the  first,  early  social  institutions,  early  ideas 
and  early  religion  involved  sexual  customs  which  modified  a  strict 
monogamy. 

The  most  primitive  form  of  complex  human  marriage  which  has  yet 
been  demonstrated  as  still  in  existence  is  what  is  called  group-marriage, 
in  which  all  the  women  of  one  class  are  regarded  as  the  actual,  or  at  all 
events  potential,  wives  of  all  the  men  in  another  class.  This  has  been 
observed  among  some  central  Australian  tribes,  a  people  as  primitive  and 


424  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   SEX. 

as  secluded  from  external  influence  as  could  well  be  found,  and  there  is 
evidence  to  show  that  it  was  formerly  more  widespread  among  them. 
"In  the  Urabunna  tribe,  for  example,"  say  Spencer  and  Gillen,  "a  group 
of  men  actually  do  have,  continually  and  as  a  normal  condition,  marital 
relations  with  a  group  of  women.  This  state  of  affairs  has  nothing 
whatever  to  do  with  polygamy  any  more  than  it  has  with  polyandry.  It 
is  simply  a  question  of  a  group  of  men  and  a  group  of  women  who  may 
lawfully  have  what  we  call  marital  relations.  There  is  nothing  what- 
ever abnormal  about  it,  and,  in  all  probability,  this  system  of  what  has 
been  called  group  marriage,  serving  as  it  does  to  bind  more  or  less 
closely  together  groups  of  individuals  Avho  are  mutually  interested  in 
one  another's  welfare,  has  been  one  of  the  most  powerful  agents  in  the 
early  stages  of  the  upward  development  of  the  human  race"  (Spencer 
and  Gillen,  'Northern  Tribes  of  Central  Australia,  p.  74;  cf.  A.  W. 
Howitt,  The  Native  Tribes  of  South-East  Australia).  Group-marriage, 
with  female  descent,  as  found  in  Australia,  tends  to  become  transformed 
by  various  stages  of  progress  into  individual  marriage  with  descent  in 
the  male  line,  a  survival  of  group-marriage  perhaps  persisting  in  the 
much-discussed  jus  prima?  noctis.  (It  should  be  added  that  Mr.  N.  W. 
Thomas,  in  his  book  on  Kinship  and  Marriage  in  Australia,  1908,  con- 
cludes that  group-marriage  in  Australia  has  not  been  demonstrated,  and 
that  Professor  Westermarck,  in  his  Origin  and  Development  of  the  Moral 
Ideas,  as  in  his  previous  History  of  Human  Marriage,  maintains  a 
skeptical  opinion  in  regard  to  group-marriage  generally;  he  thinks  the 
Urabunna  custom  may  have  developed  out  of  ordinary  individual  mar- 
riage, and  regards  the  group-marriage  theory  as  "the  residuary  legatee 
of  the  old  theory  of  promiscuity."  Durkheim  also  believes  that  the  Aus- 
tralian marriage  system  is  not  primitive,  "Organisation  Matrimoniale 
Australienne,"  L'Annie  Sociologique,  eighth  year,  1905).  With  the 
attainment  of  a  certain  level  of  social  progress  it  is  easy  to  see  that  a 
wide  and  complicated  system  of  sexual  relationships  ceases  to  have  its 
value,  and  a  more  or  less  qualified  monogamy  tends  to  prevail  as  more 
in  harmony  with  the  claims  of  social  stability  and  executive  masculine 
energy. 

The  best  historical  discussion  of  marriage  is  still  probably  Wester- 
marck's  History  of  Human  Marriage,  though  at  some  points  it  now  needs 
to  be  corrected  or  supplemented ;  among  more  recent  books  dealing  with 
primitive  sexual  conceptions  may  be  specially  mentioned  Crawley's 
Mystic  Rose,  while  the  facts  concerning  the  transformation  of  marriage 
among  the  higher  human  races  are  set  forth  in  G.  E.  Howard's  History 
.  of  Matrimonial  Institutions  ( 3  vols. ) ,  which  contains  copious  biblio- 
graphical references.  There  is  an  admirably  compact,  but  clear  and  com- 
prehensive, sketch  of  the  development  of  modern  marriage  in  Pollock  and 
Maitland,  History  of  English  Law,  vol.  ii. 


MARRIAGE.  425 

It  is  necessary  to  make  allowance  for  variations,  thereby 
shunning  the  extreme  theorists  who  insist  on  moulding  all  facts 
to  their  theories,  but  we  may  conclude  that — as  the  approximately 
equal  number  of  the  sexes  indicates — in  the  human  species,  as 
among  many  of  the  higher  animals,  a  more  or  less  permanent 
monogamy  has  on  the  whole  tended  to  prevail.  That  is  a  fact 
of  great  significance  in  its  implications.  For  we  have  to  realize 
that  we  are  here  in  the  presence  of  a  natural  fact.  Sexual 
relationships,  in  human  as  in  animal  societies,  follow  a  natural 
law,  oscillating  on  each  side  of  the  norm,  and  there  is  no  place 
for  the  theory  that  that  law  was  imposed  artificially.  If  all 
artificial  "laws"  could  be  abolished  the  natural  order  of  the 
sexual  relationships  would  continue  to  subsist  substantially  as  at 
present.  Virtue,  said  Cicero,  is  but  Nature  carried  out  to  the 
utmost.  Or,  as  Holbach  put  it,  arguing  that  our  institutions 
tend  whither  Nature  tends,  "art  is  only  Nature  acting  by  the  help 
of  the  instruments  she  has  herself  made."  Shakespeare  had 
already  seen  much  the  same  truth  when  he  said  that  the  art 
which  adds  to  Nature  "is  an  art  that  Nature  makes."  Law  and 
religion  have  buttressed  monogamy;  it  is  not  based  on  them 
but  on  the  needs  and  customs  of  mankind,  and  these  constitute  its 
completely  adequate  sanctions.1  Or,  as  Cope  put  it,  marriage 
is  not  the  creation  of  law  but  the  law  is  its  creation.2  Crawley, 
again,  throughout  his  study  of  primitive  sex  relationships, 
emphasizes  the  fact  that  our  formal  marriage  system  is  not,  as  so 
many  religious  and  moral  writers  once  supposed,  a  forcible 
repression  of  natural  impulses,  but  merely  the  rigid  crystallization 
of  those  natural  impulses,  which  in  a  more  fluid  form  have  been 
in  human  nature  from  the  first.  Our  conventional  forms,  we 
must  believe,  have  not  introduced  any  elements  of  value,  while 
in  some  respects  they  have  been  mischievous. 

It  is  necessary  to  bear  in  mind  that  the  conclusion  that  monogamic 
marriage  is  natural,  and  represents  an  order  which  is  in  harmony  with 
the  instincts  of  the  majority  of  people,  by  no  means  involves  agreement 
with  the  details  of  any  particular  legal  system  of  monogamy.     Mono- 


1  J.  A.  Godfrey,  Science  of  Sew,  p.  119. 

2  E.  D.  Cope,  "The  Marriage  Problem,"  Open  Court,  Nov.,  1888. 


426  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   SEX. 

gamic  marriage  is  a  natural  biological  fact,  alike  in  many  animals  and 
in  man.  But  no  system  of  legal  regulation  is  a  natural  biological  fact. 
When  a  highly  esteemed  alienist,  Dr.  Clouston,  writes  (The  Hygiene  of 
Mind,  p.  245 )  "there  is  only  one  natural  mode  of  gratifying  sexual  nisus 
and  reproductive  instinct,  that  of  marriage,"  the  statement  requires 
considerable  exegesis  before  it  can  be  accepted,  or  even  receive  an 
intelligible  meaning,  and  if  we  are  to  understand  by  "marriage"  the 
particular  form  and  implications  of  the  English  marriage  law,  or  even 
of  the  somewhat  more  enlightened  Scotch  law,  the  statement  is  absolutely 
false.  There  is  a  world  of  difference,  as  J.  A.  Godfrey  remarks  (The 
Science  of  Sex,  1901,  p.  278),  between  natural  monogamous  marriage  and 
our  legal  system ;  "the  former  is  the  outward  expression  of  the  best  that 
lies  in  the  sexuality  of  man;  the  latter  is  a  creation  in  which  religious 
and  moral  superstitions  have  played  a  most  important  part,  not  always 
to  the  benefit  of  individual  and  social  health." 

We  must,  therefore,  guard  against  the  tendency  to  think  that  there 
is  anything  rigid  or  formal  in  the  natural  order  of  monogamy.  Some 
sociologists  would  even  limit  the  naturalness  of  monogamy  still  further. 
Thus  Tarde  ("La  Morale  Sexuelle,"  Archives  d' Anthropologic  Criminelle, 
Jan.,  1907),  while  accepting  as  natural  under  present  conditions  the 
tendency  for  monogamy,  mitigated  by  more  or  less  clandestine  concubin- 
age, to  prevail  over  all  other  forms  of  marriage,  considers  that  this  is 
not  due  to  any  irresistible  influence,  but  merely  to  the  fact  that  this  kind 
of  marriage  is  practiced  by  the  majority  of  people,  including  the  most 
civilized. 

With  the  acceptance  of  the  tendency  to  monogamy  Ave  are  not  at 
the  end  of  sexual  morality,  but  only  at  the  beginning.  It  is  not 
monogamy  that  is  the  main  thing,  but  the  kind  of  lives  that  people  lead 
in  monogamy.  The  mere  acceptance  of  a  monogamic  rule  carries  us  but 
a  little  way.  That  is  a  fact  which  cannot  fail  to  impress  itself  on  those 
who  approach  the  questions  of  sex  from  the  psychological  side. 

If  monogamy  is  thus  firmly  based  it  is  unreasonable  to 
fear,  or  to  hope  for,  any  radical  modification  in  the  institution  of 
marriage,  regarded,  not  under  its  temporary  religious  and  legal 
aspects  but  as  an  order  which  appeared  on  the  earth  even  earlier 
than  man.  Monogamy  is  the  most  natural  expression  of  an 
impulse  which  cannot,  as  a  rule,  be  so  adequately  realized  in  full 
fruition  under  conditions  involving  a  less  prolonged  period  of 
mutual  communion  and  intimacy.  Variations,  regarded  as 
inevitable  oscillations  around  the  norm,  are  also  natural,  but 
union  in  couples  must  always  be  the  rule  because  the  numbers  of 


MARRIAGE.  427 

the  sexes  are  always  approximately  equal,  while  the  needs  of  the 
emotional  life,  even  apart  from  the  needs  of  offspring,  demand 
that  such  unions  based  on  mutual  attraction  should  be  so  far  as 
possible  permanent. 

It  must  here  again  be  repeated  that  it  is  the  reality,  and  not  the 
form  or  the  permanence  of  the  marriage  union,  which  is  its  essential  and 
valuable  part.  It  is  not  the  legal  or  religious  formality  which  sanctifies 
marriage,  it  is  the  reality  of  the  marriage  which  sanctifies  the  form. 
Fielding  has  satirized  in  Nightingale,  Tom  Jones's  friend,  the  shallow- 
brained  view  of  connubial  society  which  degrades  the  reality  of  marriage 
to  exalt  the  form.  Nightingale  has  the  greatest  difficulty  in  marrying  a 
girl  with  whom  he  has  already  had  sexual  relations,  although  he  is  the 
only  man  who  has  had  relations  with  her.  To  Jones's  arguments  he 
replies:  "Common-sense  warrants  all  you  say,  but  yet  you  well  know 
that  the  opinion  of  the  world  is  so  contrary  to  it,  that  were  I  to  marry 
a  whore,  though  my  own,  I  should  be  ashamed  of  ever  showing  my  face 
again."  It  cannot  be  said  that  Fielding's  satire  is  even  yet  out  of  date. 
Thus  in  Prussia,  according  to  Adele  Schreiber  ( "Heirathsbeschrankun- 
gen,"  Die  Neue  Generation,  Feb.,  1909),  it  seems  to  be  still  practically 
impossible  for  a  military  officer  to  marry  the  mother  of  his  own 
illegitimate  child. 

The  glorification  of  the  form  at  the  expense  of  the  reality  of  mar- 
riage has  even  been  attempted  in  poetry  by  Tennyson  in  the  least 
inspired  of  his  works,  The  Idylls  of  the  King.  In  "Lancelot  and  Elaine" 
and  "Guinevere"  (as  Julia  Magruder  points  out,  North  American  Review, 
April,  1905)  Guinevere  is  married  to  King  Arthur,  whom  she  has  never 
seen,  when  already  in  love  with  Lancelot,  so  that  the  "marriage"  was 
merely  a  ceremony,  and  not  a  real  marriage  {cf.,  May  Child,  "The  Weird 
of  Sir  Lancelot,"  North  American  Review,  Dec,  1908). 

It  may  seem  to  some  that  so  conservative  an  estimate  of 
the  tendencies  of  civilization  in  matters  of  sexual  love  is  due 
to  a  timid  adherence  to  mere  tradition.  That  is  not  the  case. 
We  have  to  recognize  that  marriage  is  firmly  held  in  position  by 
the  pressure  of  two  opposing  forces.  There  are  two  currents  in 
the  stream  of  our  civilization:  one  that  moves  towards  an  ever 
greater  social  order  and  cohesion,  the  other  that  moves  towards 
an  ever  greater  individual  freedom.  There  is  real  harmony 
underlying  the  apparent  opposition  of  these  two  tendencies,  and 
each  is  indeed  the  indispensable  complement  of  the  other.    There 


428  PSYCHOLOGY   OP    SEX. 

can  be  no  real  freedom  for  the  individual  in  the  things  that  con- 
cern that  individual  alone  unless  there  is  a  coherent  order  in  the 
things  that  concern  him  as  a  social  unit.  Marriage  in  one  of  its 
aspects  only  concerns  the  two  individuals  involved;  in  another 
of  its  aspects  it  chiefly  concerns  society.  The  two  forces  cannot 
combine  to  act  destructively  on  marriage,  for  the  one  counteracts 
the  other.  They  combine  to  support  monogamy,  in  all  essentials, 
on  its  immemorial  basis. 

It  must  be  added  that  in  the  circumstances  of  monogamy 
that  are  not  essential  there  always  has  been,  and  always  must  be, 
perpetual  transformation.  All  traditional  institutions,  however 
firmly  founded  on  natural  impulses,  are  always  growing  dead 
and  rigid  at  some  points  and  putting  forth  vitally  new  growths 
at  other  points.  It  is  the  effort  to  maintain  their  vitality,  and 
to  preserve  their  elastic  adjustment  to  the  environment,  which 
involves  this  process  of  transformation  in  non-essentials. 

The  only  way  in  which  we  can  fruitfully  approach  the 
question  of  the  value  of  the  transformations  now  taking  place 
in  our  marriage-system  is  by  considering  the  history  of  that 
system  in  the  past.  In  that  way  we  learn  the  real  significance 
of  the  marriage-system,  and  we  understand  what  transformations 
are,  or  are  not,  associated  with  a  fine  civilization.  When  we  are 
acquainted  with  the  changes  of  the  past  we  are  enabled  to  face 
more  confidently  the  changes  of  the  present. 

The  history  of  the  marriage-system  of  modern  civilized 
peoples  begins  in  the  later  days  of  the  Roman  Empire  at  the 
time  when  the  foundations  were  being  laid  of  that  Eoman  law 
which  has  exerted  so  large  an  influence  in  Christendom. 
Eeference  has  already  been  made1  to  the  significant  fact  that  in 
late  Eome  women  had  acquired  a  position  of  nearly  complete 
independence  in  relation  to  their  husbands,  while  the  patriarchal 
authority  still  exerted  over  them  by  their  fathers  had  become, 
for  the  most  part,  almost  nominal.  This  high  status  of  women 
was  associated,  as  it  naturally  tends  to  be,  with  a  high  degree  of 
freedom  in  the  marriage  system.     Roman  law  had  no  power  of 


l  See  ante,  p.  395. 


MARRIAGE.  429 

intervening  in  the  formation  of  marriages  and  there  were  no  legal 
forms  of  marriage.  The  Eomans  recognized  that  marriage  is  a 
fact  and  not  a  mere  legal  form ;  in  marriage  by  usus  there  was 
no  ceremony  at  all ;  it  was  constituted  by  the  mere  fact  of  living 
together  for  a  whole  year;  yet  such  marriage  was  regarded  as 
just  as  legal  and  complete  as  if  it  had  been  inaugurated  by  the 
sacred  rite  of  confarreatio.  Marriage  was  a  matter  of  simple 
private  agreement  in  which  the  man  and  the  woman  approached 
each  other  on  a  footing  of  equality.  The  wife  retained  full  con- 
trol of  her  own  property;  the  barbarity  of  admitting  an  action 
for  restitution  of  conjugal  rights  was  impossible,  divorce  was  a 
private  transaction  to  which  the  wife  was  as  fully  entitled  as  the 
husband,  and  it  required  no  inquisitorial  intervention  of  magis- 
trate or  court ;  Augustus  ordained,  indeed,  that  a  public  declara- 
tion was  necessary,  but  the  divorce  itself  was  a  private  legal  act 
of  the  two  persons  concerned.1  It  is  interesting  to  note  this 
enlightened  conception  of  marriage  prevailing  in  the  greatest  and 
most  masterful  Empire  which  has  ever  dominated  the  world,  at 
the  period  not  indeed  of  its  greatest  force, — for  the  maximum  of 
force  and  the  maximum  of  expansion,  the  bud  and  the  full 
flower,  are  necessarily  incompatible, — but  at  the  period  of  its 
fullest  development.  In  the  chaos  that  followed  the  dissolution 
of  the  Empire  Roman  law  remained  as  a  precious  legacy  to 
the  new  developing  nations,  but  its  influence  was  inextricably 
mingled  with  that  of  Christianity,  which,  though  not  at  the  first 
anxious  to  set  up  marriage  laws  of  its  own,  gradually  revealed  a 
growing  ascetic  feeling  hostile  alike  to  the  dignity  of  the  married 
woman  and  the  freedom  of  marriage  and  divorce.2  With  that 
influence  was  combined  the  influence,  introduced  through  the 


1  Wachter,  Eheschiedungen,  pp.  95  et  seq.;  Esmein,  Marriage  en 
Droit  Canonique,  vol.  i,  p.  6;  Howard,  History  of  Matrimonial  Institu- 
tions, vol.  ii,  p.  15.  Howard  (in  agreement  with  Lecky)  considers  that 
the  freedom  of  divorce  was  only  abused  by  a  small  section  of  the  Roman 
population,  and  that  such  abuse,  so  far  as  it  existed,  was  not  the  cause 
of  any  decline  of  Roman  morals. 

2  The  opinions  of  the  Christian  Fathers  were  very  varied,  and  they 
were  sometimes  doubtful  about  them;  see,  e.g.,  the  opinions  collected  by 
Cranmer  and  enumerated  by  Burnet,  History  of  Reformation  (ed.  Nares), 
vol.  ii,  p.  91. 


430  PSYCHOLOGY   OP   SEX. 

Bible,  of  the  barbaric  Jewish  marriage-system  conferring  on  the 
husband  rights  in  marriage  and  divorce  which  were  totally 
denied  to  the  wife;  this  was  an  influence  which  gained  still 
greater  force  at  the  Eef ormation  when  the  authority  once  accorded 
to  the  Church  was  largely  transformed  to  the  Bible.  Finally, 
there  was  in  a  great  part  of  Europe,  including  the  most  energetic 
and  expansive  parts,  the  influence  of  the  Germans,  an  influence 
still  more  primitive  than  that  of  the  Jews,  involving  the  con- 
ception of  the  wife  as  almost  her  husband's  chattel,  and  marriage 
as  a  purchase.  All  these  influences  clashed  and  often  appeared 
side  by  side,  though  they  could  not  be  harmonized.  The  result 
was  that  the  fifteen  hundred  years  that  followed  the  complete 
conquest  of  Christianity  represent  on  the  whole  the  most 
degraded  condition  to  which  the  marriage  system  has  ever  been 
known  to  fall  for  so  long  a  period  during  the  whole  course  of 
human  history. 

At  first  indeed  the  beneficent  influence  of  Eome  continued 
in  some  degree  to  prevail  and  even  exhibited  new  developments. 
In  the  time  of  the  Christian  Emperors  freedom  of  divorce  by 
mutual  consent  was  alternately  maintained,  and  abolished.1  We 
even  find  the  wise  and  far-seeing  provision  of  the  law  enacting 
that  a  contract  of  the  two  parties  never  to  separate  could  have  no 
legal  validity.  Justinian's  prohibition  of  divorce  by  consent  led 
to  much  domestic  unhappiness,  and  even  crime,  which  appears  to 
be  the  reason  why  it  was  immediately  abrogated  by  his  successor, 
Theodosius,  still  maintaining  the  late  Eoman  tradition  of  the 
moral  equality  of  the  sexes,  allowed  the  wife  equally  with  the 
husband  to  obtain  a  divorce  for  adultery ;  that  is  a  point  we  have 
not  yet  attained  in  England  to-day. 

1  Constantine,  the  first  Christian  Emperor,  enacted  a  strict  and 
peculiar  divorce  law  (allowing  a  wife  to  divorce  her  husband  only  when 
he  was  a  homicide,  a  poisoner,  or  a  violator  of  sepulchres ) ,  which  could 
not  be  maintained.  In  497,  therefore,  Anastasius  decreed  divorce  by 
mutual  consent.  This  was  abolished  by  Justinian,  who  only  allowed 
divorce  for  various  specified  causes,  among  them,  however,  including  the 
husband's  adultery.  These  restrictions  proved  unworkable,  and  Jus- 
tinian's successor  and  nephew,  Justin,  restored  divorce  by  mutual  con- 
sent. Finally,  in  870,  Leo  the  Philosopher  returned  to  Justinian's 
enwiment  (see,  e.g.,  Smith  and  Cheetham,  Dictionary  of  Christian  Anti' 
fuities),  arts.  "Adultery"  and  "Marriage" ) . 


MARRIAGE.  431 

It  seems  to  be  admitted  on  all  sides  that  it  was  largely 
the  fatal  influence  of  the  irruption  of  the  barbarous  Germans 
which  degraded,  when  it  failed  to  sweep  away,  the  noble  con- 
ception of  the  equality  of  women  with  men,  and  the  dignity  and 
freedom  of  marriage,  slowly  moulded  by  the  organizing  genius 
of  the  Eoman  into  a  great  tradition  which  still  retains  a  supreme 
value.  The  influence  of  Christianity  had  at  the  first  no  degrad- 
ing influence  of  this  kind;  for  the  ascetic  ideal  was  not  yet  pre- 
dominant, priests  married  as  a  matter  of  course,  and  there  was  no 
difficulty  in  accepting  the  marriage  order  established  in  the 
secular  world ;  it  was  even  possible  to  add  to  it  a  new  vitality  and 
freedom.  But  the  Germans,  with  all  the  primitively  acquisitive 
and  combative  instincts  of  untamed  savages,  went  far  beyond 
even  the  early  Eomans  in  the  subjection  of  their  wives;  they 
allowed  indeed  to  their  unmarried  girls  a  large  measure 
of  indulgence  and  even  sexual  freedom, — just  as  the  Christians 
also  reverenced  their  virgins,1 — but  the  German  marriage  system 
placed  the  wife,  as  compared  to  the  wife  of  the  Eoman  Empire,  in 
a  condition  little  better  than  that  of  a  domestic  slave.  In  one 
form  or  another,  under  one  disguise  or  another,  the  system  of 
wife-purchase  prevailed  among  the  Germans,  and,  whenever  that 
system  is  influential,  even  when  the  wife  is  honored  her  privileges 
are  diminished.2  Among  the  Teutonic  peoples  generally,  as 
among  the  early  English,  marriage  was  indeed  a  private  trans- 
action but  it  took  the  form  of  a  sale  of  the  bride  by  the  father,  or 
other  legal  guardian,  to  the  bridegroom.     The  beweddung  was  a 


1  The  element  of  reverence  in  the  early  German  attitude  towards 
women  and  the  privileges  which  even  the  married  woman  enjoyed,  so  far 
as  Tacitus  can  be  considered  a  reliable  guide,  seem  to  have  been  the 
surviving  vestiges  of  an  earlier  social  state  on  a  more  matriarchal  basis. 
They  are  most  distinct  at  the  dawn  of  German  history.  From  the  first, 
however,  though  divorce  by  mutual  consent  seems  to  have  been  possible, 
German  custom  was  pitiless  to  the  married  woman  who  was  unfaithful, 
sterile,  or  otherwise  offended,  though  for  some  time  after  the  introduction 
of  Christianity  it  was  no  offence  for  the  German  husband  to  commit 
adultery  ( Westermarck,  Origin  of  the  Moral  Ideas,  vol.  ii,  p.  453). 

2  "This  form  of  marriage,"  says  Hobhouse  (op.  cit.,  vol.  i,  p.  156), 
"is  intimately  associated  with  the  extension  of  marital  power."  Gf. 
Howard,  op.  cit.,  vol.  i,  p.  231.  The  very  subordinate  position  of  the 
mediaeval  German  woman  is  set  forth  by  Hagelstange,  Siiddeutsches 
Bauernleben  in  Mittelalter,  1898,  pp.  70  et  sea. 


432  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   SEX. 

real  contract  of  sale.1  "Sale-marriage"  was  the  most  usual  form 
of  marriage.  The  ring,  indeed,  probably  was  not  in  origin,  as 
some  have  supposed,  a  mark  of  servitude,  but  rather  a  form  of 
bride-price,  or  arrha,  that  is  to  say,  earnest  money  on  the  contract 
of  marriage  and  so  the  symbol  of  it.2  At  first  a  sign  of  the 
bride's  purchase,  it  was  not  till  later  that  the  ring  acquired  the 
significance  of  subjection  to  the  bridegroom,  and  that  significance, 
later  in  the  Middle  Ages,  was  further  emphasized  by  other  cere- 
monies. Thus  in  England  the  York  and  Sarum  manuals  in 
some  of  their  forms  direct  the  bride,  after  the  delivery  of  the 
ring,  to  fall  at  her  husband's  feet,  and  sometimes  to  kiss  his  right 
foot.  In  Eussia,  also,  the  bride  kissed  her  husband's  feet.  At  a 
later  period,  in  France,  this  custom  was  attenuated,  and  it  became 
customary  for  the  bride  to  let  the  ring  fall  in  front  of  the  altar 
and  then  stoop  at  her  husband's  feet  to  pick  it  up.3  Feudalism 
carried  on,  and  by  its  military  character  exaggerated,  these 
Teutonic  influences.  A  fief  was  land  held  on  condition  of 
military  service,  and  the  nature  of  its  influence  on  marriage  is 
implied  in  that  fact.  The  woman  was  given  with  the  fief  and 
her  own  will  counted  for  nothing.4 

The  Christian  Church  in  the  beginning  accepted  the  forms 


1  Howard,  op.  tit.,  vol.  i,  p.  259 ;  Smith  and  Cheetham,  Dictionary 
of  Christian  Antiquities,  art.  Arrhce.  It  would  appear,  however,  that 
the  "bvide-sale,"  of  which  Tacitus  speaks,  was  not  strictly  the  sale  of  a 
chattel  nor  of  a  slave-girl,  but  the  sale  of  the  mund  or  protectorship  over 
the  girl.  It  is  true  the  distinction  may  not  always  have  been  clear  to 
those  who  took  part  in  the  transaction.  Similarly  the  Anglo-Saxon 
betrothal  was  not  so  much  a  payment  of  the  bride's  price  to  her  kinsmen, 
although  as  a  matter  of  fact,  they  might  make  a  profit  out  of  the  trans- 
action, as  a  covenant  stipulating  for  the  bride's  honorable  treatment  as 
wife  and  widow.  Eeminiscenees  of  this,  remark  Pollock  and  Maitland 
{op.  tit.,  vol.  ii,  p.  364),  may  be  found  in  "that  curious  cabinet  of  anti- 
quities, the  marriage  ritual  of  the  English  Church." 

2  Howard,  op.  tit.,  vol.  i,  pp.  278-281,  386.  The  Arrha  crept  into 
Roman  and  Byzantine  law  during  the  sixth  century. 

3  J.  Wickham  Legg,  Ecclesiological  Essays,  p.  189.  It  may  be 
added  that  the  idea  of  the  subordination  of  the  wife  to  the  husband 
appeared  in  the  Christian  Church  at  a  somewhat  early  period,  and  no 
doubt  independently  of  Germanic  influences;  St.  Augustine  said  (Sermo 
XXXVII,  cap.  vi)  that  a  good  materfamilias  must  not  be  ashamed  to 
call  herself  her  husband's  servant  (ancilla). 

4  See,  e.g.,  L.  Gautier,  La  Chevalerie,  Ch.  IX. 


MARRIAGE.  433 

of  marriage  already  existing  in  those  countries  in  which  it  found 
itself,  the  Eoman  forms  in  the  lands  of  Latin  tradition  and  the 
German  forms  in  Teutonic  lands.  It  merely  demanded  (as  it 
also  demanded  for  other  civil  contracts,  such  as  an  ordinary 
sale)  that  they  should  be  hallowed  by  priestly  benediction.  But 
the  marriage  was  recognized  by  the  Church  even  in  the  absence 
of  such  benediction.  There  was  no  special  religious  marriage 
service,  either  in  the  East  or  the  West,  earlier  than  the  sixth 
century.  It  was  simply  the  custom  for  the  married  couple,  after 
the  secular  ceremonies  were  completed,  to  attend  the  church, 
listen  to  the  ordinary  service  and  take  the  sacrament.  A  special 
marriage  service  was  developed  slowly,  and  it  was  no  part  of 
the  real  marriage.  During  the  tenth  century  (at  all  events  in 
Italy  and  France)  it  was  beginning  to  become  customary  to  cele- 
brate the  first  part  of  the  real  nuptials,  still  a  purely  temporal 
act,  outside  the  church  door.  Soon  this  was  followed  by  the 
regular  bride-mass,  directly  applicable  to  the  occasion,  inside  the 
church.  By  the  twelfth  century  the  priest  directed  the  cere- 
mony, now  involving  an  imposing  ritual,  which  began  outside  the 
church  and  ended  with  the  bridal  mass  inside.  By  the  thirteenth 
century,  the  priest,  superseding  the  guardians  of  the  young 
couple,  himself  officiated  through  the  whole  ceremony.  Up  to 
that  time  marriage  had  been  a  purely  private  business  transaction. 
Thus,  after  more  than  a  millennium  of  Christianity,  not  by  law 
but  by  the  slow  growth  of  custom,  ecclesiastical  marriage  was 
established.1 

It  was  undoubtedly  an  event  of  very  great  importance  not 
merely  for  the  Church  but  for  the  whole  history  of  European 
marriage  even  down  to  to-day.  The  whole  of  our  public  method 
of  celebrating  marriage  to-day  is  based  on  that  of  the  Catholic 
Church  as  established  in  the  twelfth  century  and  formulated  in 
the  Canon  law.  Even  the  publication  of  banns  has  its  origin  here, 
and  the  fact  that  in  our  modern  civil  marriage  the  public 
ceremony  takes  place  in  an  office  and  not  in  a  Church  may  dis- 


1  Howard,  op.  cit.,  vol.  i,  pp.  293  et  seq.;  Esmein,  op.  cit.,  vol.  i,  pp. 
25  et  seq.;  Smith  and  Cheetham,  Dictionary  of  Christian  Antiquities, 
art.  "Contract  of  Marriage." 


434  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   SEX. 

guise  but  cannot  alter  the  fact  that  it  is  the  direct  and  unques- 
tionable descendant  of  the  public  ecclesiastical  ceremony  which 
embodied  the  slow  and  subtle  triumph — so  slow  and  subtle  that 
its  history  is  difficult  to  trace — of  Christian  priests  over  the 
private  affairs  of  men  and  women.  Before  they  set  themselves  to 
this  task  marriage  everywhere  was  the  private  business  of  the 
persons  concerned;  when  they  had  completed  their  task, — and 
it  was  not  absolutely  complete  until  the  Council  of  Trent, — a 
private  marriage  had  become  a  sin  and  almost  a  crime.1 

It  may  seem  a  matter  for  surprise  that  the  Church  which, 
as  we  know,  had  shown  an  ever  greater  tendency  to  reverence 
virginity  and  to  cast  contumely  on  the  sexual  relationship,  should 
yet,  parallel  with  that  movement  and  with  the  growing  influence 
of  asceticism,  have  shown  so  great  an  anxiety  to  capture  marriage 
and  to  confer  on  it  a  public,  dignified,  and  religious  character. 
There  was,  however,  no  contradiction.  The  factors  that  were 
constituting  European  marriage,  taken  as  a  whole,  were  indeed 
of  very  diverse  characters  and  often  involved  unreconciled  con- 
tradictions. But  so  far  as  the  central  efforts  of  the  ecclesiastical 
legislators  were  concerned,  there  was  a  definite  and  intelligible 
point  of  view.  The  very  depreciation  of  the  sexual  instinct 
involved  the  necessity,  since  the  instinct  could  not  be  uprooted, 
of  constituting  for  it  a  legitimate  channel,  so  that  ecclesiastical 
matrimony  was,  it  has  been  said,  "analogous  to  a  license  to  sell 
intoxicating  liquors."2  Moreover,  matrimony  exhibited  the 
power  of  the  Church  to  confer  on  the  license  a  dignity  and  dis- 
tinction which  would  clearly  separate  it  from  the  general  stream 
of  lust.  Sexual  enjoyment  is  impure,  the  faithful  cannot  par- 
take of  it  until  it  has  been  purified  by  the  ministrations  of  the 
Church.  The  solemnization  of  marriage  was  the  necessary 
result  of  the  sanctification  of  virginity.     It  became  necessary 


1  Any  later  changes  in  Catholic  Canon  law  have  merely  been  in  the 
direction  of  making  matrimony  still  narrower  and  still  more  remote 
from  the  practice  of  the  world.  By  a  papal  decree  of  1907,  civil  mar- 
riages and  marriages  in  non-Catholic  places  of  worship  are  declared  to 
be  not  only  sinful  and  unlawful  (which  they  were  before),  but  actually 
null  and  void. 

2  E.  S.  P.  Haynes,  Our  Divorce  Law,  p.  3. 


MARRIAGE.  435 

to  sanctify  marriage  also,  and  hence  was  developed  the  indis- 
soluble sacrament  of  matrimony.  The  conception  of  marriage 
as  a  religious  sacrament,  a  conception  of  far-reaching  influence, 
is  the  great  contribution  of  the  Catholic  Church  to  the  history 
of  marriage. 

It  is  important  to  remember  that,  while  Christianity  brought  the 
idea  of  marriage  as  a  sacrament  into  the  main  stream  of  the  institutional 
history  of  Europe,  that  idea  was  merely  developed,  not  invented,  by  the 
Church.  It  is  an  ancient  and  even  primitive  idea.  The  Jews  believed 
that  marriage  is  a  magico-religious  bond,  having  in  it  something  mystical 
resembling  a  sacrament,  and  that  idea,  says  Durkheim  {L'Annee  Socio- 
logique,  eighth  year,  1905,  p.  419),  is  perhaps  very  archaic,  and  hangs 
on  to  the  generally  magic  character  of  sex  relations.  "The  mere  act  of 
union,  Crawley  remarks   (The  Mystic  Rose,  p.  318)   concerning  savages, 

"is  potentially  a  marriage  ceremony  of  the  sacramental  kind 

One  may  even  credit  the  earliest  animistic  men  with  some  such  vague 
conception  before  any  ceremony  became  crystallized."  The  essence  of  a 
marriage  ceremony,  the  same  writer  continues,  "is  the  'joining  together' 
of  a  man  and  a  woman;  in  the  words  of  our  English  service,  'for  this 
cause  shall  a  man  leave  his  father  and  mother  and  shall  be  joined  unto 
his  wife;  and  they  two  shall  be  one  flesh.'  At  the  other  side  of  the 
world,  amongst  the  Orang  Benuas,  these  words  are  pronounced  by  an 
elder,  when  a  marriage  is  solemnized:  'Listen  all  ye  that  are  present; 
those  that  were  distant  are  now  brought  together;  those  that  were 
separated  are  now  united.'  Marriage  ceremonies  in  all  stages  of  culture 
may  be  called  religious  with  as  much  propriety  as  any  ceremony  what- 
ever. Those  who  were  separated  are  now  joined  together,  those  who 
were  mutually  taboo  now  break  the  taboo."  Thus  marriage  ceremonies 
prevent  sin  and  neutralize  danger. 

The  Catholic  conception  of  marriage  was,  it  is  clear,  in  essentials 
precisely  the  primitive  conception.  Christianity  drew  the  sacramental 
idea  from  the  archaic  traditions  in  popular  consciousness,  and  its  own 
ecclesiastical  contribution  lay  in  slowly  giving  that  idea  a  formal  and 
rigid  shape,  and  in  declaring  it  indissoluble.  As  among  savages,  it  was 
in  the  act  of  consent  that  the  essence  of  the  'sacrament  lay;  the 
intervention  of  the  priest  was  not,  in  principle,  necessary  to  give  mar- 
riage its  religiously  binding  character.  The  essence  of  the  sacrament 
was  mutual  acceptance  of  each  other  by  the  man  and  the  woman,  as  hus- 
band and  wife,  and  technically  the  priest  who  presided  at  the  ceremony 
was  simply  a  witness  of  the  sacrament.  The  essential  fact  being  thus 
the  mental  act  of  consent,  the  sacrament  of  matrimony  had  the  peculiar 
character  of  being  without  any  outward  and  visible  sign.     Perhaps  it 


436  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

was  this  fact,  instinctively  felt  as  a  weakness,  which  led  to  the  immense 
emphasis  on  the  indissolubility  of  the  sacrament  of  matrimony,  already 
established  by  St.  Augustine.  The  Canonists  brought  forward  various 
arguments  to  account  for  that  indissolubility,  and  a  frequent  argument 
has  always  been  the  Scriptural  application  of  the  term  "one  flesh"  to 
married  couples;  but  the  favorite  argument  of  the  Canonists  was  that 
matrimony  represents  the  \mion  of  Christ  witb  the  Church;  that  is 
indissoluble,  and  therefore  its  image  must  be  indissoluble  (Esmein,  op. 
cit.,  vol.  i,  p.  64).  In  part,  also,  one  may  well  believe,  the  idea  of  the 
indissolubility  of  marriage  suggested  itself  to  the  ecclesiastical  mind  by 
a  natural-  association  of  ideas :  the  vow  of  virginity  in  monasticism  was 
indissoluble;  ought  not  the  vow  of  sexual  relationship  in  matrimony  to 
be  similarly  indissoluble?  It  appears  that  it  was  not  until  1164,  in 
Peter  Lombard's  Sentences,  that  clear  and  formal  recognition  is  found  of 
matrimony  as  one  of  the  seven  sacraments  (Howard,  op.  cit.,  vol.  i,  p. 
333). 

The  Church,  however,  had  not  only  made  marriage  a  reli- 
gions act ;  it  had  also  made  it  a  public  act.  The  officiating  priest, 
who  had  now  become  the  arbiter  of  marriage,  was  bound  by  all 
the  injunctions  and  prohibitions  of  the  Church,  and  he  could 
not  allow  himself  to  bend  to  the  inclinations  and  interests  of 
individual  couples  or  their  guardians.  It  was  inevitable  that  in 
this  matter,  as  in  other  similar  matters,  a  code  of  ecclesiastical 
regulations  should  be  gradually  developed  for  his  guidance. 
This  need  of  the  Church,  due  to  its  growing  control  of  the 
world's  affairs,  was  the  origin  of  Canon  law.  With  the  develop- 
ment of  Canon  law  the  whole  field  of  the  regulation  of  the 
sexual  relationships,  and  the  control  of  its  aberrations,  became  an 
exclusively  ecclesiastical  matter.  The  secular  law  could  take  no 
more  direct  cognizance  of  adultery  than  of  fornication  or  mastur- 
bation; bigamy,  incest,  and  sodomy  were  not  temporal  crimes; 
the  Church  was  supreme  in  the  whole  sphere  of  sex. 

It  was  during  the  twelfth  century  that  Canon  law  developed, 
and  Gratian  was  the  master  mind  who  first  moulded  it.  He 
belonged  to  the  Bolognese  school  of  jurisprudence  which  had 
inherited  the  sane  traditions  of  Eoman  law.  The  Canons  which 
Gratian  compiled  were,  however,  no  more  the  mere  result  of 
legal  traditions  than  they  were  the  outcome  of  cloistered  theo- 
logical speculation.     They  were  the  result  of  a  response  to  the 


MARRIAGE.  437 

practical  needs  of  the  day  before  those  needs  had  had  time  to 
form  a  foundation  for  fine-spun  subtleties.  At  a  somewhat 
later  period,  before  the  close  of  the  century,  the  Italian  jurists 
were  vanquished  by  the  Gallic  theologians  of  Paris  as  represented 
by  Peter  Lombard.  The  result  was  the  introduction  of  mis- 
chievous complexities  which  went  far  to  rob  Canon  law  alike  of 
its  certainty  and  its  adaptation  to  human  necessities. 

Notwithstanding,  however,  all  the  parasitic  accretions  which 
swiftly  began  to  form  around  the  Canon  law  and  to  entangle  its 
practical  activity,  that  legislation  embodied — predominantly  at 
the  outset  and  more  obscurely  throughout  its  whole  period  of 
vital  activity — a  sound  core  of  real  value.  The  Canon  law 
recognized  at  the  outset  that  the  essential  fact  of  marriage  is  the 
actual  sexual  union,  accomplished  with  the  intention  of  inaugu- 
rating a  permanent  relationship.  The  copula  camalis,  the  mak- 
ing of  two  "one  flesh/'  according  to  the  Scriptural  phrase,  a 
mystic  symbol  of  the  union  of  the  Church  to  Christ,  was  the 
essence  of  marriage,  and  the  mutual  consent  of  the  couple  alone 
sufficed  to  constitute  marriage,  even  without  any  religious  bene- 
diction, or  without  any  ceremony  at  all.  The  formless  and 
unblessed  union  was  still  a  real  and  binding  marriage  if  the  two 
parties  had  willed  it  so  to  be.1 

Whatever  hard  things  may  be  said  about  the  Canon  law,  it  must 
never  be  forgotten  that  it  carried  through  the  Middle  Ages  until  the 
middle  of  the  sixteenth  century  the  great  truth  that  the  essence  of  mar- 
riage lies  not  in  rites  and  forms,  but  in  the  mutual  consent  of  the  two 
persons  who  marry  each  other.  When  the  Catholic  Church,  in  its  grow- 
ing rigidity,  lost  that  conception,  it  was  taken  up  by  the  Protestants 
and  Puritans  in  their  first  stage  of  ardent  vital  activity,  though  it  was 
more  or  less  dropped  as  they  fell  back  into  a  state  of  subservience  to 
forms.  It  continued  to  be  maintained  by  moralists  and  poets.  Thus 
George  Chapman,  the  dramatist,  who  was  both  moralist  and  poet,  in 
The  Gentleman  Usher  (1606),  represents  the  riteless  marriage  of  his 
hero  and  heroine,  which  the  latter  thus  introduces: — 


1  It  was  the  Council  of  Trent,  in  the  sixteenth  century,  which  made 
ecclesiastical  rites  essential  to  binding  marriage;  but  even  then  fifty- 
six  prelates  voted  against  that  decision. 


438  '  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   SEX. 

"May  not  we  now 
Our  contract  make  and  marry  before  Heaven? 
Are  not  the  laws  of  God  and  Nature  more 
Than  formal  laws  of  men  ?     Are  outward  rites 
More  virtuous  than  the  very  substance  is 
Of  holy  nuptials  solemnzied  within  ? 
.     .     .     .     The  eternal  acts  of  our  pure  souls 
Knit  us  Avith  God,  the  soul  of  all  the  world, 
He  shall  be  priest  to  us;    and  with  such  rites 
As  we  can  here  devise  we  will  express 
And  strongly  ratify  our  hearts'  true  vows, 
Which  no  external  violence  shall  dissolve." 

And  to-day,  Ellen  Key,  the  distinguished  prophet  of  marriage  reform, 
declares  at  the  end  of  her  Liebe  und  Ehe  that  the  true  marriage  law 
contains  only  the  paragraph :  "They  who  love  each  other  are  husband  and 
wife." 

The  establishment  of  marriage  on  this  sound  and  natural- 
istic basis  had  the  further  excellent  result  that  it  placed  the  man 
and  the  woman,  who  could  thus  constitute  marriage  by  their  con- 
sent in  entire  disregard  of  the  wishes  of  their  parents  or  families, 
on  the  same  moral  level.  Here  the  Church  was  following  alike 
the  later  Eomans  and  the  early  Christians  like  Lactantius  and 
Jerome  who  had  declared  that  what  was  licit  for  a  man  was  licit 
for  a  woman.  The  Penitentials  also  attempted  to  set  up  this 
same  moral  law  for  both  sexes.  The  Canonists  finally  allowed  a 
certain  supremacy  to  the  husband,  though,  on  the  other  hand, 
they  sometimes  seemed  to  assign  even  the  chief  part  in  marriage 
to  the  wife,  and  the  attempt  was  made  to  derive  the  word  matri- 
monium  from  matris  munium,  thereby  declaring  the  maternal 
function  to  be  the  essential  fact  of  marriage.1 

The  sound  elements  in  the  Canon  law  conception  of  marriage 
were,  however,  from  a  very  early  period  largely  if  not  altogether 
neutralized  by  the  verbal  subtleties  by  which  they  were  overlaid, 
and  even  by  its  own  fundamental  original  defects.  Even  in  the 
thirteenth  century  it  began  to  be  possible  to  attach  a  superior 
force  to  marriage  verbally  formed  per  verba  de  prcesenti  than  to 


l  Esmein,  op.  cit.,  vol.  i,  p.  91. 


MARRIAGE.  439 

one  constituted  by  sexual  union,  while  so  many  impediments  to 
marriage  were  set  up  that  it  became  difficult  to  know  what  mar- 
riages were  valid,  an  important  point  since  a  marriage  even  inno- 
cently contracted  within  the  prohibited  degrees  was  only  a 
putative  marriage.  The  most  serious  and  the  most  profoundly 
unnatural  feature  of  this  ecclesiastical  conception  of  marriage 
was  the  flagrant  contradiction  between  the  extreme  facility  with 
which  the  gate  of  marriage  was  flung  open  to  the  young  couple, 
even  if  they  were  little  more  than  children,  and  the  extreme 
rigor  with  which  it  was  locked  and  bolted  when  they  were  inside. 
That  is  still  the  defect  of  the  marriage  system  we  have  inherited 
from  the  Church,  but  in  the  hands  of  the  Canonists  it  was 
emphasized  both  on  the  side  of  its  facility  for  entrance  and  of 
its  difficulty  for  exit.1  Alike  from  the  standpoint  of  reason  and 
of  humanity  the  gate  that  is  easy  of  ingress  must  be  easy  of 
egress;  or  if  the  exit  is  necessarily  difficult  then  extreme  care 
must  be  taken  in  admission.  But  neither  of  these  necessary  pre- 
cautions was  possible  to  the  Canonists.  Matrimony  was  a 
sacrament  and  all  must  be  welcome  to  a  sacrament,  the  more  so 
since  otherwise  they  may  be  thrust  into  the  mortal  sin  of  fornica- 
tion. On  the  other  side,  since  matrimony  was  a  sacrament,  when 
once  truly  formed,  beyond  the  permissible  power  of  verbal 
quibbles  to  invalidate,  it  could  never  be  abrogated.  The  very 
institution  that,  in  the  view  of  the  Church,  had  been  set  up  as  a 
bulwark  against  license  became  itself  an  instrument  for  artificially 
creating  license.  So  that  the  net  result  of  the  Canon  law  in  the 
long  run  was  the  production  of  a  state  of  things  which — in  the 


1  It  is  sometimes  said  that  the  Catholic  Church  is  able  to  diminish 
the  evils  of  its  doctrine  of  the  indissolubility  of  marriage  by  the  number 
of  impediments  to  marriage  it  admits,  thus  affording  free  scope  for  dis- 
pensations from  marriage.  This  scarcely  seems  to  be  the  case.  Dr.  P. 
J.  Hayes,  who  speaks  with  authority  as  Chancellor  of  the  Catholic  Arch- 
diocese of  New  York,  states  ("Impediments  to  Marriage  in  the  Catholic 
Church,"  Worth  American  Review,  May,  1905)  that  even  in  so  modern 
and  so  mixed  a  community  as  this  there  are  few  applications  for  dispen- 
sations on  account  of  impediments;  there  are  15,000  Catholic  marriages 
per  annum  in  New  York  City,  but  scarcely  five  per  annum  are  questioned 
as  to  validity,  and  these  chiefly  on  the  ground  of  bigamy. 


440  PSYCHOLOGY   OP   SEX. 

eyes  of  a  large  part  of  Christendom — more  than  neutralized  the 
soundness  of  its  original  conception.1 

In  England,  where  from  the  ninth  century,  marriage  was  gener- 
ally accepted  by  the  ecclesiastical  and  temporal  powers  as  indissoluble, 
Canon  law  was,  in  the  main,  established  as  in  the  rest  of  Christendom. 
There  were,  however,  certain  points  in  which  Canon  law  was  not  accepted 
by  the  law  of  England.  By  English  law  a  ceremony  before  a  priest  was 
necessary  to  the  validity  of  a  marriage,  though  in  Scotland  the  Canon 
law  doctrine  was  accepted  that  simple  consent  of  the  parties,  even 
exchanged  secretly,  sufficed  to  constitute  marriage.  Again,  the  issue  of 
a  void  marriage  contracted  in  innocence,  and  the  issue  of  persons  who 
subsequently  marry  each  other,  are  legitimate  by  Canon  law,  but  not  by 
the  common  law  of  England  (Geary,  Marriage  and  Family  Relations, 
p.  3 ;  Pollock  and  Maitland,  loc.  cit. ) .  The  Canonists  regarded  the  dis- 
abilities attaching  to  bastardy  as  a  punishment  inflicted  on  the  offending 
parents,  and  considered,  therefore,  that  no  burden  should  fall  on  the 
children  when  there  had  been  a  ceremony  in  good  faith  on  the  part  of 
one  at  least  of  the  parents.  In  this  respect  the  English  law  is  less  rea- 
sonable and  humane.  It  was  at  the  Council  of  Merton,  in  1236,  that  the 
barons  of  England  rejected  the  proposal  to  make  the  laws  of  England 
harmonize  with  the  Canon  law,  that  is,  with  the  ecclesiastical  law  of 
Christendom  generally,  in  allowing  children  born  before  wedlock  to  be 
legitimated  by  subsequent  marriage.  Grosseteste  poured  forth  his  elo- 
quence and  his  arguments  in  favor  of  the  change,  but  in  vain,  and  the 
law  of  England  has  ever  since  stood  alone  in  this  respect  (Freeman, 
"Merton  Priory,"  English  Towns  and  Districts).  The  proposal  was 
rejected  in  the  famous  formula,  "Nolumus  leges  Anglise  mutare,"  a  for- 
mula which  merely  stood  for  an  unreasonable  and  inhumane  obstinacy. 

In  the  United  States,  while  by  common  law  subsequent  marriage 
fails  to  legitimate  children  born  before  marriage,  in  many  of  the  States 
the  subsequent  marriage  of  the  parents  effects  by  statute  the  legitimacy 
of  the  child,  sometimes  (as  in  Maine)  automatically,  more  usually  (as 
in  Massachusetts)  through  special  acknowledgment  by  the  father. 

The  appearance  of  Luther  and  the  Eeformation  involved 
the  decay  of  the  Canon  law  system  so  far  as  Europe  as  a  whole 
was  concerned.     It  was  for  many  reasons  impossible  for  the 


1  The  Canonists,  say  Pollock  and  Maitland  (loo.  cit.),  "made  a 
capricious  mess  of  the  marriage  law."  "Seldom,"  says  Howard  (op.  cit., 
vol  i,  p.  340),  "have  mere  theory  and  subtle  quibbling  had  more  disas- 
trous consequences  in  practical  life  than  in  the  case  of  the  distinction 
between  sponsalia  de  prcesenti  and  de  futuro." 


MARRIAGE.  441 

Protestant  reformers  to  retain  formally  either  the  Catholic  con- 
ception of  matrimony  or  the  precariously  elaborate  legal  structure 
which  the  Church  had  built  up  on  that  conception.  It  can 
scarcely  be  said,  indeed,  that  the  Protestant  attitude  towards  the 
Catholic  idea  of  matrimony  was  altogether  a  clear,  logical,  or 
consistent  attitude.  It  was  a  revolt,  an  emotional  impulse,  rather 
than  a  matter  of  reasoned  principle.  In  its  inevitable  necessity, 
under  the  circumstances  of  the  rise  of  Protestantism,  lies  its 
justification,  and,  on  the  whole,  its  wholesome  soundness.  It 
took  the  form,  which  may  seem  strange  in  a  religious  movement, 
of  proclaiming  that  marriage  is  not  a  religious  but  a  secular 
matter.  Marriage  is,  said  Luther,  "a  worldly  thing,"  and  Calvin 
put  it  on  the  same  level  as  house-building,  farming,  or  shoe- 
making.  But  while  this  secularization  of  marriage  represents 
the  general  and  final  drift  of  Protestantism,  the  leaders  of 
Protestantism  were  themselves  not  altogether  confident  and  clear- 
sighted in  the  matter.  Even  Luther  was  a  little  confused  on  this 
point;  sometimes  he  seems  to  call  marriage  "a  sacrament," 
sometimes  "a  temporal  business,"  to  be  left  to  the  state.1  It 
was  the  latter  view  which  tended  to  prevail.  But  at  first  there 
was  a  period  of  confusion,  if  not  of  chaos,  in  the  minds  of  the 
Keformers;  not  only  were  they  not  always  convinced  in  their 
own  minds ;  they  were  at  variance  with  each  other,  especially  on 
the  very  practical  question  of  divorce.  Luther  on  the  whole 
belonged  to  the  more  rigid  party,  including  Calvin  and  Beza, 
which  would  grant  divorce  only  for  adultery  and  malicious  deser- 
tion; some,  including  many  of  the  early  English  Protestants, 
were  in  favor  of  allowing  the  husband  to  divorce  for  adultery  but 
not  the  wife.  Another  party,  including  Zwingli,  were  influenced 
by  Erasmus  in  a  more  liberal  direction,  and — moving  towards 
the  standpoint  of  Eoman  Imperial  legislation — admitted  various 
causes  of  divorce.  Some,  like  Bucer,  anticipating  Milton,  would 
even  allow  divorce  when  the  husband  was  unable  to  love  his  wife. 


1  Howard,  op.  tit.,  vol.  i,  pp.  386  et  seq.  On  the  whole,  however, 
Luther's  opinion  was  that  marriage,  though  a  sacred  and  mysterious 
thing,  is  not  a  sacrament;  his  various  statements  on  the  matter  are 
brought  together  by  Strampff,  Luther  iiber  die  Ehe,  pp.  204-214. 


442  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

At  the  beginning  some  of  the  Beforniers  adopted  the  principle  of 
self-divorce,  as  it  prevailed  among  the  Jews  and  was  accepted  by 
some  early  Church  Councils.  In  this  way  Luther  held  that  the 
cause  for  the  divorce  itself  effected  the  divorce  without  any 
judicial  decree,  though  a  magisterial  permission  was  needed  for 
remarriage.  This  question  of  remarriage,  and  the  treatment 
of  the  adulterer,  were  also  matters  of  dispute.  The  remarriage 
of  the  innocent  party  was  generally  accepted ;  in  England  it  began 
in  the  middle  of  the  sixteenth  century,  was  pronounced  valid  by 
the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  and  confirmed  by  Parliament. 
Man}'  Eeformers  were  opposed,  however,  to  the  remarriage  of  the 
adulterous  parlry.  Beust,  Beza,  and  Melanehthon  would  have 
him  hanged  and  so  settle  the  question  of  remarriage;  Luther 
and  Calvin  would  like  to  kill  him,  but  since  the  civil  rulers  were 
slack  in  adopting  that  measure  they  allowed  him  to  remarry,  if 
possible  in  some  other  part  of  the  country.1 

The  final  outcome  was  that  Protestantism  framed  a  con- 
ception of  marriage  mainly  on  the  legal  and  economic  factor — a 
factor  not  ignored  but  strictly  subordinated  by  the  Canonists — 
and  regarded  it  as  essentially  a  contract.  In  so  doing  they  were 
on  the  negative  side  effecting  a  real  progress,  for  they  broke  the 
power  of  an  antiquated  and  artificial  system,  but  on  the  positive 
side  they  were  merely  returning  to  a  conception  which  prevails  in 
barbarous  societies,  and  is  most  pronounced  when  marriage  is 
most  assimilable  to  purchase.  The  steps  taken  by  Protestantism 
involved  a  considerable  change  in  the  nature  of  marriage,  but  not 
necessarily  any  great  changes  in  its  form.  Marriage  was  no 
longer  a  sacrament,  but  it  was  still  a  public  and  not  a  private 
function  and  was  still,  however  inconsistently,  solemnized  in 
Church.  And  as  Protestantism  had  no  rival  code  to  set  up,  both 
in  Germany  and  England  it  fell  back  on  the  general  principles  of 
Canon  law,  modifying  them  to  suit  its  own  special  attitude  and 
needs.2     It   was   the   later   Puritanic   movement,   first   in   the 

1  Howard,  op.  cit.,  vol.  ii,  pp.  61  et  seq. 

2  Probably  as  a  result  of  the  somewhat  confused  and  incoherent 
attitude  of  the  Reformers,  the  Canon  law  of  marriage,  in  a  modified  form, 
really  persisted  in  Protestant  countries  to  a  greater  extent  than  in 
Catholic  countries:  in  France,  especially,  it  has  been  much  more  pro- 
foundly modified  (Esmein,  op.  cit.,  vol.  i,  p.  33). 


.MARRIAGE.  443 

Netherlands  (1580),  then  in  England  (1653),  and  afterwards  in 
New  England,  which  introduced  a  serious  and  coherent  con- 
ception of  Protestant  marriage,  and  began  to  establish  it  on  a 
civil  base. 

The  English  Reformers  under  Edward  VI  and  his  enlightened 
advisers,  including  Archbishop  Cranmer,  took  liberal  views  of  marriage, 
and  were  prepared  to  carry  through  many  admirable  reforms.  The  early 
death  of  that  King  exerted  a  profound  influence  on  the  legal  history  of 
English  marriage.  The  Catholic  reaction  under  Queen  Mary  killed  off 
the  more  radical  Reformers,  while  the  subsequent  accession  of  Queen 
Elizabeth,  whose  attitude  towards  marriage  was  grudging,  illiberal,  and 
old-fashioned,  approximating  to  that  of  her  father,  Henry  VIII  (as  wit- 
nessed, for  instance,  in  her  decided  opposition  to  the  marriage  of  the 
clergy),  permanently  affected  English  marriage  law.  It  became  less 
liberal  than  that  of  other  Protestant  countries,  and  closer  to  that  of 
Catholic  countries. 

The  reform  of  marriage  attempted  by  the  Puritans  began  in  Eng- 
land in  1644,  when  an  Act  was  passed  asserting  "marriage  to  be  no  sacra- 
ment, nor  peculiar  to  the  Church  of  God,  but  common  to  mankind  and 
of  public  interest  to  every  Commonwealth."  The  Act  added,  notwith- 
standing, that  it  was  expedient  marriage  should  be  solemnized  by  "a 
lawful  minister  of  the  Word."  The  more  radical  Act  of  1653  swept  away 
this  provision,  and  made  marriage  purely  secular.  The  banns  were  to  be 
published  (by  registrars  specially  appointed)  in  the  Church,  or  (if  the 
parties  desired)  the  market-place.  The  marriage  was  to  be  performed 
by  a  Justice  of  the  Peace;  the  age  of  consent  to  marriage  for  a  man  was 
made  sixteen,  for  a  woman  fourteen  (ScobelPs  Acts  and  Ordinances,  pp. 
86,  236).  The  Restoration  abolished  this  sensible  Act,  and  reintroduced 
Canon-law  traditions,  but  the  Puritan  conception  of  marriage  was  car- 
ried over  to  America,  where  it  took  root  and  flourished. 

It  was  out  of  Puritanism,  moreover,  as  represented  by 
Milton,  that  the  first  genuinely  modern  though  as  yet  still  imper- 
fect conception  of  the  marriage  relationship  was  destined  to 
emerge.  The  early  Eeformers  in  this  matter  acted  mainly  from 
an  obscure  instinct  of  natural  revolt  in  an  environment  of 
plebeian  materialism.  The  Puritans  were  moved  by  their  feeling 
for  simplicity  and  civil  order  as  the  conditions  for  religious  free- 
dom. Milton,  in  his  Doctrine  and  Discipline  of  Divorce,  pub- 
lished in  1643,  when  he  was  thirty-five  years  of  age,  proclaimed 
the  supremacy  of  the  substance  of  marriage  over  the  form  of  it, 


444  PSYCHOLOGY   OP   SEX. 

and  the  spiritual  autonomy  of  the  individual  in  the  regulation  of 
that  form.  He  had  grasped  the  meaning  of  that  conception  of 
personal  responsibility  which  is  the  foundation  of  sexual  relation- 
ships as  they  are  beginning  to  appear  to  men  to-day.  If  Milton 
had  left  behind  him  only  his  writings  on  marriage  and  divorce 
they  would  have  sufficed  to  stamp  him  with  the  seal  of  genius. 
Christendom  had  to  wait  a  century  and  a  half  before  another  man 
of  genius  of  the  first  rank,  Wilhelm  von  Humboldt,  spoke  out 
with  equal  authority  and  clearness  in  favor  of  free  marriage  and 
free  divorce. 

It  is  to  the  honor  of  Milton,  and  one  of  his  chief  claims  on  our 
gratitude,  that  he  is  the  first  great  protagonist  in  Christendom  of  the 
doctrine  that  marriage  is  a  private  matter,  and  that,  therefore,  it  should 
be  freely  dissoluble  by  mutual  consent,  or  even  at  the  desire  of  one  of 
the  parties.  We  owe  to  him,  says  Howard,  "the  boldest  defence  of  the 
liberty  of  divorce  which  had  yet  appeared.  If  taken  in  the  abstract,  and 
applied  to  both  sexes  alike,  it  is  perhaps  the  strongest  defence  which  can 
be  made  through  an  appeal  to  mere  authority;"  though  his  arguments, 
being  based  on  reason  and  experience,  are  often  ill  sustained  by  his 
authority;  he  is  really  speaking  the  language  of  the  modern  social 
reformer,  and  Milton's  writings  on  this  subject  are  now  sometimes  ranked 
in  importance  above  all  his  other  work  (Masson,  Life  of  Milton,  vol.  iii; 
Howard,  op.  cit.,  vol.  ii,  p.  86,  vol.  iii,  p.  251;  C.  B.  Wheeler,  "Milton's 
Doctrine  and  Discipline  of  Divorce,"  Nineteenth  Century,  Jan.,  1907). 

Marriage,  said  Milton,  "is  not  a  mere  carnal  coition,  but  a  human 
society;  where  that  cannot  be  had  there  can  be  no  true  marriage"  (Doc- 
trine of  Divorce,  Bk.  i,  Ch.  XIII)  ;  it  is  "a  covenant,  the  very  being 
whereof  consists  not  in  a  forced  cohabitation,  and  counterfeit  perform- 
ance of  duties,  but  in  unfeigned  love  and  peace"  (76.,  Ch.  VI).  Any 
marriage  that  is  less  than  this  is  "an  idol,  nothing  in  the  world."  The 
weak  point  in  Milton's  presentation  of  the  matter  is  that  he  never 
explicitly  accords  to  the  wife  the  same  power  of  initiative  in  marriage 
and  divorce  as  to  the  husband.  There  is,  however,  nothing  in  his  argu- 
ment to  prevent  its  equal  application  to  the  wife,  an  application  which, 
while  never  asserting  he  never  denies;  and  it  has  been  pointed  out  that 
he  assumes  that  women  are  the  equals  of  men  and  demands  from  them 
intellectual  and  spiritual  companionship;  however  ready  Milton  may 
have  been  to  grant  complete  equality  of  divorce  to  the  wife,  it  would 
have  been  impossible  for  a  seventeenth  century  Puritan  to  have  obtained 
any  hearing  for  such  a  doctrine;  his  arguments  would  have  been  received 
with,  if  that  were  possible,  even  more  neglect  than  they  actually  met. 


MARRIAGE.  445 

(Milton's  scornful  sonnet  concerning  the  reception  of  his  book  is  well 
known. ) 

Milton  insists  that  in  the  conventional  Christian  marriage  exclusive 
importance  is  attached  to  carnal  connection.  So  long  as  that  connection 
is  possible,  no  matter  what  antipathy  may  exist  between  the  couple,  no 
matter  how  mistaken  they  may  have  been  "through  any  error,  conceal- 
ment, or  misadventure,"  no  matter  if  it  is  impossible  for  them  to  "live 
in  any  union  or  contentment  all  their  days,"  yet  the  marriage  still  holds 
good,  the  two  must  "fadge  together"  (op.  cit.,  Bk.  i).  It  is  the  Canon 
law,  he  says,  which  is  at  fault,  "doubtless  by  the  policy  of  the  devil,"  for 
the  Canon  law  leads  to  licentiousness  ( op.  cit. ) .  It  is,  he  argues,  the 
absence  of  reasonable  liberty  which  causes  license,  and  it  is  the  men  who 
desire  to  retain  the  privileges  of  license  who  oppose  the  introduction  of 
reasonable  liberty. 

The  just  ground  for  divorce  is  "indisposition,  unfitness,  or  con- 
trariety of  mind,  arising  from  a  cause  in  nature  unchangeable,  hindering, 
and  ever  likely  to  hinder,  the  main  benefits  of  conjugal  society,  which 
are  solace  and  peace."  Without  the  "deep  and  serious  verity"  of  mutual 
love,  wedlock  is  "nothing  but  the  empty  husks  of  a  mere  outside  matri- 
mony," a  mere  hypocrisy,  and  must  be  dissolved  ( op.  cit. ) . 

Milton  goes  beyond  the  usual  Puritan  standpoint,  and  not  only 
rejects  courts  and  magistrates,  but  approves  of  self -divorce ;  for  divorce 
cannot  rightly  belong  to  any  civil  or  earthly  power,  since  "ofttimes  the 
causes  of  seeking  divorce  reside  so  deeply  in  the  radical  and  innocent 
affections  of  nature,  as  is  not  within  the  diocese  of  law  to  tamper  with." 
He  adds  that,  for  the  prevention  of  injustice,  special  points  may  be 
referred  to  the  magistrate,  who  should  not,  however,  in  any  case,  be  able 
to  forbid  divorce  (op.  cit.,  Bk.  ii,  Ch.  XXI).  Speaking  from  a  stand- 
point which  we  have  not  even  yet  attained,  he  protests  against  the 
absurdity  of  "authorizing  a  judicial  court  to  toss  about  and  divulge  the 
unaccountable  and  secret  reason  of  disaffection  between  man  and  wife." 

In  modern  times  Hinton  was  accustomed  to  compare  the  marriage 
law  to  the  law  of  the  Sabbath  as  broken  by  Jesus.  We  find  exactly  the 
same  comparison  in  Milton.  The  Sabbath,  he  believes,  was  made  for 
God.  "Yet  when  the  good  of  man  comes  into  the  scales,  we  have  that 
voice  of  infinite  goodness  and  benignity,  that  'Sabbath  was  made  for  man 
and  not  man  for  Sabbath.'  What  thing  ever  was  made  more  for  man 
alone,  and  less  for  God,  than  marriage?"  (op  cit.,  Bk.  i,  Ch.  XI).  "If 
man  be  lord  of  the  Sabbath,  can  he  be  less  than  lord  of  marriage?" 

Milton,  in  this  matter  as  in  others,  stood  outside  the  currents 
of  his  age.  His  conception  of  marriage  made  no  more  impres- 
sion on  contemporary  life  than  his  Paradise  Lost.    Even  his 


446  PSYCHOLOGY   OF   SEX. 

own  Puritan  party  who  had  passed  the  Act  of  1653  had  strangely 
failed  to  transfer  divorce  and  nullity  cases  to  the  temporal  courts, 
which  would  at  least  have  been  a  step  on  the  right  road.  The 
Puritan  influence  was  transferred  to  America  and  constituted 
the  leaven  which  still  works  in  producing  the  liberal  though  too 
minutely  detailed  divorce  laws  of  many  States.  The  American 
secular  marriage  procedure  followed  that  set  up  by  the  English 
Commonwealth,  and  the  dictum  of  the  great  Quaker,  George 
Pox,  "We  marry  none,  but  are  witnesses  of  it,"1  (which  was  really 
the  sound  kernel  in  the  Canon  law)  is  regarded  as  the  spirit  of 
the  marriage  law  of  the  conservative  but  liberal  State  of  Pennsyl- 
vania, where,  as  recently  as  1885,  a  statute  was  passed  expressly 
authorizing  a  man  and  woman  to  solemnize  their  own  marriage.2 
In  England  itself  the  reforms  in  marriage  law  effected  by  the 
Puritans  were  at  the  Restoration  largely  submerged.  For  two 
and  a  half  centuries  longer  the  English  spiritual  courts  adminis- 
tered what  was  substantially  the  old  Canon  law.  Divorce  had, 
indeed,  become  more  difficult  than  before  the  Eeformation,  and 
the  married  woman's  lot  was  in  consequence  harder.  From  the 
sixteenth  century  to  the  second  half  of  the  nineteenth,  English 
marriage  law  was  peculiarly  harsh  and  rigid,  much  less  liberal 
than  that  of  any  other  Protestant  country.  Divorce  was 
unknown  to  the  ordinary  English  law,  and  a  special  act  of 
Parliament,  at  enormous  expense,  was  necessary  to  procure  it  in 
individual  eases.3  There  was  even  an  attitude  of  self-righteous- 
ness in  the  maintenance  of  this  system.  It  was  regarded  as 
moral.  There  was  complete  failure  to  realize  that  nothing  is 
more  immoral  than  the  existence  of  unreal  sexual  unions,  not 


i  The  Quaker  conception  of  marriage  is  still  vitally  influential. 
"Why,"  says  Mrs.  Besant  {Marriage,  p.  19),  "should  not  we  take  a  leaf 
out  of  the  Quaker's  book,  and  substitute  for  the  present  legal  forms  of 
marriage  a  simple  declaration  publicly  made?" 

2  Howard,  op.  cit.,  vol.  ii,  p.  456.  The  actual  practice  in  Pennsyl- 
vania appears,  however,  to  differ  little  from  that  usual  in  the  other 
States. 

3  Howard,  op.  cit.,  vol.  ii,  p.  109.  "It  is,  indeed,  wonderful," 
Howard  remarks,  "that  a  great  nation,  priding  herself  on  a  love  of  equity 
and  social  liberty,  should  thus  for  five  generations  tolerate  an  invidious 
indulgence,  rather  than  frankly  and  courageously  to  free  herself  from 
the  shackles  of  an  ecclesiastical  tradition." 


MARRIAGE.  447 

only  from  the  point  of  view  of  theoretical  but  also  of  practical 
morality,  for  no  community  could  tolerate  a  majority  of  such 
unions.1  In  1857  an  act  for  reforming  the  system  was  at  last 
passed  with  great  difficulty.  It  was  a  somewhat  incoherent  and 
make-shift  measure,  and  was  avowedly  put  forward  only  as  a 
step  towards  further  reform;  but  it  still  substantially  governs 
English  procedure,  and  in  the  eyes  of  many  has  set  a  permanent 
standard  of  morality.  The  spirit  of  blind  conservatism, — 
Nolumus  leges  Anglics  matare, — which  in  this  sphere  had 
reasserted  itself  after  the  vital  movement  of  Eeform  and  Puritan- 
ism, still  persists.  In  questions  of  marriage  and  divorce  English 
legislation  and  English  public  feeling  are  behind  alike  both  the 
Latin  land  of  France  and  the  Puritanically  moulded  land  of  the 
United  States. 

The  author  of  an  able  and  temperate  essay  on  The  Question  of  Eng- 
lish Divorce,  summing  up  the  characteristics  of  the  English  divorce  law, 
concludes  that  it  is:  (1)  unequal,  (2)  immoral,  (3)  contradictory,  (4) 
illogical,  (5)  uncertain,  and  (6)  unsuited  to  present  requirements.  It 
was  only  grudgingly  introduced  in  a  bill,  presented  to  Parliament  in 
1857,  which  was  stubbornly  resisted  during  a  whole  session,  not  only  on 
religious  grounds  by  the  opponents  of  divorce,  but  also  by  the  friends  of 
divorce,  who  desired  a  more  liberal  measure.  It  dealt  with  the  sexes 
unequally,  granting  the  husband  but  not  the  wife  divorce  for  adultery 
alone.  In  introducing  the  bill  the  Attorney-General  apologized  for  this 
defect,  stating  that  the  measure  was  not  intended  to  be  final,  but  merely 
as  a  step  towards  further  legislation.  That  was  more  than  half  a  cen- 
tury ago,  but  the  further  step  has  not  yet  been  taken.  Incomplete  and 
unsatisfactory  as  the  measure  was,  it  seems  to  have  been  regarded  by 
many  as  revolutionary  and  dangerous  in  the  highest  degree.  The  author 
of  an  article  on  "Modern  Divorce"  in  the  Universal  Review  for  July, 
1859,  while  approving  in  principle  of  the  establishment  of  a  special 
Divorce  Court,  yet  declared  that  the  new  court  was  "tending  to  destroy 
marriage  as  a  social  institution  and  to  sap  female  chastity,"  and  that 
"everyone  now  is  a  husband  and  wife  at  will."  "No  one,"  he  adds,  "can 
now  justly  quibble  at  a  deficiency  of  matrimonial  vomitories." 


l  "The  enforced  continuance  of  an  unsuccessful  union  is  perhaps 
the  most  immoral  thing  which  a  civilized  society  ever  countenanced,  far 
less  encouraged,"  says  Godfrey  {Science  of  Sex,  p.  123).  "The  morality 
of  a  union  is  dependent  upon  mutual  desire,  and  a  union  dictated  by 
any  other  cause  is  outside  the  moral  pale,  however  custom  may  sanction 
it,  or  religion  and  law  condone  it." 


448  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SES. 

Yet,  according  to  this  law,  it  is  not  even  possible  for  a  wife  to 
obtain  a  divorce  for  her  husband's  adultery,  unless  he  is  also  cruel  or 
deserts  her.  At  first  "cruelty"  meant  physical  cruelty  and  of  a  serious 
kind.  But  in  course  of  time  the  meaning  of  the  word  was  extended  to 
pain  inflicted  on  the  mind,  and  now  coldness  and  neglect  may  almost  of 
themselves  constitute  cruelty,  though  the  English  court  has  sometimes 
had  the  greatest  hesitation  in  accepting  the  most  atrocious  forms  of 
refined  cruelty,  because  it  involved  no  "physical"  element.  "The  time 
may  very  reasonably  be  looked  forward  to,  however,"  a  legal  writer  has 
stated  (Montmorency,  "The  Changing  Status  of  a  Married  Woman," 
Law  Quarterly  Review,  April,  1897),  "when  almost  any  act  of  misconduct 
will,  in  itself,  be  considered  to  convey  such  mental  agony  to  the  innocent 
party  as  to  constitute  the  cruelty  requisite  under  the  Act  of  1857."  (The 
question  of  cruelty  is  fully  discussed  in  J.  R.  Bishop's  Commentaries  on 
Marriage,  Divorce  and  Separation,  1891,  vol.  i,  Ch.  XLIX;  cf.  Howard, 
op.  cit.,  vol.  ii,  p.  111). 

There  can  be  little  doubt,  however,  that  cruelty  alone  is  a  reasonable 
cause  for  divorce.  In  many  American  States,  where  the  facilities  for 
divorce  are  much  greater  than  in  England,  cruelty  is  recognized  as  itself 
sufficient  cause,  whether  the  wife  or  the  husband  is  the  complainant. 
The  acts  of  cruelty  alleged  have  sometimes  been  seemingly  very  trivial. 
Thus  divorces  have  been  pronounced  in  America  on  the  ground  of  the 
"cruel  and  inhuman  conduct"  of  a  wife  who  failed  to  sew  her  husband's 
buttons  on,  or  because  a  wife  "struck  plaintiff  a  violent  blow  with  her 
bustle,"  or  because  a  husband  does  not  cut  his  toe-nails,  or  because  "dur- 
ing our  whole  married  life  my  husband  has  never  offered  to  take  me  out 
riding.  This  has  been  a  source  of  great  mental  suffering  and  injury." 
In  many  other  cases,  it  must  be  added,  the  cruelty  inflicted  by  the  hus- 
band, even  by  the  wife — for  though  usually,  it  is  not  always,  the  husband 
who  is  the  brute — is  of  an  atrocious  and  heart-rending  character  (Report 
on  Marriage  and  Divorce  in  the  United  States,  issued  by  Hon.  Carroll  D. 
Wright,  Commissioner  of  Labor,  1889).  But  even  in  many  of  the  appar- 
ently trivial  cases — as  of  a  husband  who  will  not  wash,  and  a  wife  who 
is  constantly  evincing  a  hasty  temper — it  must  be  admitted  that  circum- 
stances which,  in  the  more  ordinary  relationships  of  life  may  be  toler- 
ated, become  intolerable  in  the  intimate  relationship  of  sexiial  union. 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  it  has  been  found  by  careful  investigation  that  the 
American  courts  weigh  well  the  cases  that  come  before  them,  and  are 
not  careless  in  the  granting  of  decrees  of  divorce. 

In  1859  an  exaggerated  importance  was  attached  to  the  gross  rea- 
sons for  divorce,  to  the  neglect  of  subtle  but  equally  fatal  impediments 
to  the  continuance  of  marriage.  This  was  pointed  out  by  Gladstone,  who 
was  opposed  to  making  adultery  a  cause  of  divorce  at  all.  "We  have 
many  causes,"  he  said,  "more  fatal  to  the  great  obligation  of  marriage, 


MARRIAGE.  449 

as  disease,  idiocy,  crime  involving  punishment  for  life."  Nowadays  we 
are  beginning  to  recognize  not  only  such  causes  as  these,  but  others  of 
a  far  more  intimate  character  which,  as  Milton  long  ago  realized,  cannot 
be  embodied  in  statutes,  or  pleaded  in  law  courts.  The  matrimonial 
bond  is  not  merely  a  physical  union,  and  we  have  to  learn  that,  as  the 
author  of  The  Question  of  English  Divorce  (p.  49)  remarks,  "other  than 
physical  divergencies  are,  in  fact,  by  far  the  most  important  of  the 
originating  causes  of  matrimonial  disaster." 

In  England  and  Wales  more  husbands  than  wives  petition  for 
divorce,  the  wives  who  petition  being  about  40  per  cent,  of  the  whole. 
Divorces  are  increasing,  though  the  number  is  not  large,  in  1907  about 
1,300,  of  whom  less  than  half  remarried.  The  inadequacy  of  the  divorce 
law  is  shown  by  the  fact  that  during  the  same  year  about  7,000  orders 
for  judicial  separation  were  issued  by  magistrates.  These  separation 
orders  not  only  do  not  give  the  right  to  remarry,  but  they  make  it  impos- 
sible to  obtain  divorce.  They  are,  in  effect,  an  official  permission  to 
form  relationships  outside  State  marriage. 

In  the  United  States  during  the  years  18S7-1906  nearly  40  per  cent, 
of  the  divorces  granted  were  for  "desertion,"  which  is  variously  inter- 
preted in  different  States,  and  must  often  mean  a  separation  by  mutual 
consent.  Of  the  remainder,  19  per  cent,  were  for  unfaithfulness,  and 
the  same  proportion  for  cruelty;  but  while  the  divorces  granted  to  hus- 
bands for  the  infidelity  of  their  wives  are  nearly  three  times  as  great 
proportionately  as  those  granted  to  wives  for  their  husband's  adultery, 
with  regard  to  cruelty  it  is  the  reverse,  wives  obtaining  27  per  cent,  of 
their  divorces  on  that  ground  and  husbands  only  10  per  cent. 

In  Prussia  divorce  is  increasing.  In  1907  there  were  eight  thou- 
sand divorces,  the  cause  in  half  the  cases  being  adultery,  and  in  about 
a  thousand  cases  malicious  desertion.  In  cases  of  desertion  the  husbands 
were  the  guilty  parties  nearly  twice  as  often  as  the  wives,  in  cases  of 
adultery  only  a  fifth  to  an  eighth  part. 

There  cannot  be  the  slightest  doubt  that  the  difficulty,  the 
confusion,  the  inconsistency,  and  the  flagrant  indecency  which 
surround  divorce  and  the  methods  of  securing  it  are  due  solely  and 
entirely  to  the  subtle  persistence  of  traditions  based,  on  the  one 
hand,  on  the  Canon  law  doctrines  of  the  indissolubility  of  mar- 
riage and  the  sin  of  sexual  intercourse  outside  marriage,  and,  on 
the  other  hand,  on  the  primitive  idea  of  marriage  as  a  contract 
which  economically  subordinates  the  wife  to  the  husband  and 
renders  her  person,  or  at  all  events  her  guardianship,  his  property. 
It  is  only  when  we  realize  how  deeply  these  traditions  have 


450  PSYCHOLOGY    OP    SEX. 

become  embedded  in  the  religious,  legal,  social  and  sentimental 
life  of  Europe  that  we  can  understand  how  it  is.  that  barbaric 
notions  of  marriage  and  divorce  can  to-day  subsist  in  a  stage  of 
civilization  which  has,  in  many  respects,  advanced  beyond  such 
notions. 

The  Canon  law  conception  of  the  abstract  religious  sanctity 
of  matrimony,  when  transferred  to  the  moral  sphere,  makes  a 
breach  of  the  marriage  relationship  seem  a  public  wrong;  the 
conception  of  the  contractive  subordination  of  the  wife  makes 
such  a  breach  on  her  part,  and  even,  by  transference  of  ideas,  on 
his  part,  seem  a  private  wrong.  These  two  ideas  of  wrong 
incoherently  flourish  side  by  side  in  the  vulgar  mind,  even  to-day. 

The  economic  subordination  of  the  wife  as  a  species  of 
property  significant!}''  comes  into  view  when  we  find  that  a 
husband  can  claim,  and  often  secure,  large  sums  of  money  from 
the  man  who  sexually  approaches  his  property,  by  such  trespass 
damaging  it  in  its  master's  eyes.1  To  a  psychologist  it  would  be 
obvious  that  a  husband  who  has  lacked  the  skill  so  to  gain  and  to 
hold  his  wife's  love  and  respect  that  it  is  not  perfectly  easy  and 
natural  to  her  to  reject  the  advances  of  any  other  man  owes  at 
least  as  much  damages  to  her  as  she  or  her  partner  owes  to  him ; 
while  if  the  failure  is  really  on  her  side,  if  she  is  so  incapable  of 
responding  to  love  and  trust  and  so  easy  a  prey  to  an  outsider, 
then  surely  the  husband,  far  from  wishing  for  any  money  com- 
pensation, should  consider  himself  more  than  fully  compensated 
by  being  delivered  from  the  necessity  of  supporting  such  a 
woman.  In  the  absence  of  any  false  traditions  that  would  be 
obvious.  It  might  not,  indeed,  be  unreasonable  that  a  husband 
should  pay  heavily  in  order  to  free  himself  from  a  wife  whom, 
evidently,  he  has  made  a  serious  mistake  in  choosing.  But  to 
ordain  that  a  man  should  actually  be  indemnified  because  he  has 


i  Adultery  in  most  savage  and  barbarous  societies  is  regarded,  in 
the  words  of  Westermarck,  as  "an  illegitimate  appropriation  of  the 
exclusive  claims  which  the  husband  has  acquired  by  the  purchase  of  his 
wife,  as  an  offence  against  property;"  the  seducer  is,  therefore,  punished 
as  a  thief,  by  fine,  mutilation,  even  death  ( Origin  of  the  Moral  Ideas,  vol. 
ii,  pp.  447  et  seq.;  id.,  History  of  Human  Marriage,  p.  121).  Among 
some  peoples  it  is  the  seducer  who  alone  suffers,  and  not  the  wife. 


MARRIAGE.  451 

shown  himself  incapable  of  winning  a  woman's  love  is  an  idea 
that  could  not  occur  in  a  civilized  society  that  was  not  twisted 
by  inherited  prejudice.1  Yet  as  matters  are  to-day  there  are 
civilized  countries  in  which  it  is  legally  possible  for  a  husband 
to  enter  a  prayer  for  damages  against  his  wife's  paramour  in 
combination  with  either  a  petition  for  judicial  separation  or  for 
dissolution  of  wedlock.  In  this  way  adultery  is  not  a  crime  but 
a  private  injury.2 

At  the  same  time,  however,  the  influence  of  Canon  law  comes 
inconsistently  to  the  surface  and  asserts  that  a  breach  of 
matrimony  is  a  public  wrong,  a  sin  transformed  by  the  State 
into  something  almost  or  quite  like  a  crime.  This  is  clearly 
indicated  by  the  fact  that  in  some  countries  the  adulterer  is 
liable  to  imprisonment,  a  liability  scarcely  nowadays  carried  into 
practice.  But  exactly  the  same  idea  is  beautifully  illustrated  by 
the  doctrine  of  "collusion,"  which,  in  theory,  is  still  strictly 
observed  in  many  countries.  According  to  the  doctrine  of 
"collusion"  the  conditions  necessary  to  make  the  divorce  possible 
must  on  no  account  be  secured  by  mutual  agreement.  In  practice 
it  is  impossible  to  prevent  more  or  less  collusion,  but  if  proved 
in  court  it  constitutes  an  absolute  impediment  to  the  granting  of 
a  divorce,  however  just  and  imperative  the  demand  for  divorce 
may  be. 

The  English  Divorce  Act  of  1857  refused  divorce  when  there  was 
collusion,  as  well  as  when  there  was  any  countercharge  against  the 
petitioner,  and  the  Matrimonial  Causes  Act  of  1860  provided  the  machin- 
ery for  guaranteeing  these  bars  to  divorce.     This  question  of  collusion  is 


1  It  is  sometimes  said  in  defence  of  the  claim  for  damages  for 
seducing  a  wife  that  women  are  often  weak  and  unable  to  resist  mas- 
culine advances,  so  that  the  law  ought  to  press  heavily  on  the  man  who 
takes  advantage  of  that  weakness.  This  argument  seems  a  little  anti- 
quated. The  law  is  beginning  to  accept  the  responsibility  even  of  mar- 
ried women  in  other  respects,  and  can  scarcely  refuse  to  accept  it  for 
the  control  of  her  own  person.  Moreover,  if  it  is  so  natural  for  the 
woman  to  yield,  it  is  scarcely  legitimate  to  punish  the  man  with  whom 
she  has  performed  that  natural  act.  It  must  further  be  said  that  if  a 
wife's  adultery  is  only  an  irresponsible  feminine  weakness,  a  most  undue 
brutality  is  inflicted  on  her  by  publicly  demanding  her  pecuniary  price 
from  her  lover.  If,  indeed,  we  accept  this  argument,  we  ought  to  rein- 
troduce the  mediaeval  girdle  of  chastity. 

2  Howard,  op.  cit.,  vol.  ii,  p.  114. 


452  PSYCHOLOGY    OP    SPX. 

discussed  by  G.  P.  Bishop  (op.  cit.,  vol.  ii,  Ch.  IX).  "However  just  a 
cause  may  be/'  Bishop  remarks,  "if  parties  collude  in  its  management, 
so  that  in  real  fact  both  parties  are  plaintiffs,  while  by  the  record  the 
one  appears  as  plaintiff  and  the  other  as  defendant,  it  cannot  go  forward. 
All  conduct  of  this  sort,  disturbing  to  the  course  of  justice,  falls  within 
the  general  idea  of  fraud  on  the  court.  Such  is  the  doctrine  in  principle 
everywhere." 

It  is  quite  evident  that  from  the  social  or  the  moral  point 
of  view,  it  is  best  that  when  a  husband  and  wife  can  no  longer  live 
together,  they  should  part  amicably,  and  in  harmonious  agree- 
ment effect  all  the  arrangements  rendered  necessary  by  their 
separation.  The  law  ridiculously  forbids  them  to  do  so,  and 
declares  that  they  must  not  part  at  all  unless  they  are  willing  to 
part  as  enemies.  In  order  to  reach  a  still  lower  depth  of 
absurdity  and  immorality  the  law  goes  on  to  say  that  if  as  a 
matter  of  fact  they  have  succeeded  in  becoming  enemies  to  each 
other  to  such  an  extent  that  each  has  wrongs  to  plead  against  the 
other  party  they  cannot  be  divorced  at  all  I1  That  is  to  say  that 
when  a  married  couple  have  reached  a  degree  of  separation  which 
makes  it  imperatively  necessary,  not  merely  in  their  own  interests 
but  in  the  moral  interests  of  society,  that  they  should  be  separated 
and  their  relations  to  other  parties  concerned  regularized,  then 
they  must  on  no  account  be  separated. 

It  is  clear  how  these  provisions  of  the  law  are  totally  opposed 
to  the  demands  of  reason  and  morality.  Yet  at  the  same  time  it 
is  equally  clear  how  no  efforts  of  the  lawyers,  however  skilful 
or  humane  those  efforts  may  be,  can  bring  the  present  law  into 
harmony  with  the  demands  of  modern  civilization.     It  is  not 


l  This  rule  is,  in  England,  by  no  means  a  dead  letter.  Thus,  in 
1907,  a  wife  who  had  left  her  home,  leaving  a  letter  stating  that  her  hus- 
band was  not  the  father  of  her  child,  subsequently  brought  an  action  for 
divorce,  which,  as  the  husband  made  no  defence,  she  obtained.  But,  the 
King's  Proctor  having  learnt  the  facts,  the  decree  was  rescinded.  Then 
the  husband  brought  an  action  for  divorce,  but  could  not  obtain  it,  hav- 
ing already  admitted  his  own  adultery  by  leaving  the  previous  case 
undefended.  He  took  the  matter  up  to  the  Court  of  Appeal,  but  his 
petition  was  dismissed,  the  Court  being  of  opinion  that  "to  grant  relief 
in  such  a  case  was  not  in  the  interest  of  public  morality."  The  safest 
way  in  England  to  render  what  is  legally  termed  marriage  absolutely 
indissoluble  is  for  both  parties  to  commit  adultery. 


MARRIAGE.  458 

the  lawyers  who  are  at  fault;  they  have  done  their  best,  and, 
in  England,  it  is  entirely  owing  to  the  skilful  and  cautious  way  in 
which  the  judges  have  so  far  as  possible  pressed  the  law  into 
harmony  with  modern  needs,  that  our  antiquated  divorce  laws 
have  survived  at  all.  It  is  the  system  which  is  wrong.  That 
system  is  the  illegitimate  outgrowth  of  the  Canon  law  which 
grew  up  around  conceptions  long  since  dead.  It  involves  the 
placing  of  the  person  who  imperils  the  theoretical  indissolubility 
of  the  matrimonial  bond  in  the  position  of  a  criminal,  now  that 
he  can  no  longer  be  publicly  condemned  as  a  sinner.  To  aid 
and  abet  that  criminal  is  itself  an  offence,  and  the  aider  and 
abettor  of  the  criminal  must,  therefore,  be  inconsequently  pun- 
ished by  the  curious  method  of  refraining  from  punishing  the 
criminal.  We  do  not  openly  assert  that  the  defendant  in  a 
•divorce  case  is  a  criminal ;  that  would  be  to  render  the  absurdity 
of  it  too  obvious,  and,  moreover,  would  be  hardly  consistent  with 
the  permission  to  claim  damages  which  is  based  on  a  different 
idea.  We  hover  uncertainly  between  two  conceptions  of  divorce, 
both  of  them  bad,  each  inconsistent  with  the  other,  and  neither 
of  them  capable  of  being  pushed  to  its  logical  conclusions. 

The  result  is  that  if  a  perfectly  virtuous  married  couple 
comes  forward  to  claim  divorce,  they  are  told  that  it  is  out 
of  the  question,  for  in  such  a  case  there  must  be  a  "defendant." 
They  are  to  be  punished  for  their  virtue.  If  each  commits 
adultery  and  they  again  come  forward  to  claim  divorce,  they  are 
told  that  it  is  still  out  of  the  question,  for  there  must  be  a 
"plaintiff."  Before  they  were  punished  for  their  virtue;  now 
they  are  to  be  punished  in  exactly  the  same  way  for  their  lack 
of  it.  The  couple  must  humor  the  law  by  adopting  a  course 
of  action  which  may  be  utterly  repugnant  to  both.  If  only  the 
wife  alone  will  commit  adultery,  if  only  the  husband  will  commit 
adultery  and  also  inflict  some  act  of  cruelty  upon  his  wife,  if 
the  innocent  party  will  descend  to  the  degradation  of  employing 
detectives  and  hunting  up  witnesses,  the  law  is  at  their  feet  and 
hastens  to  accord  to  both  parties  the  permission  to  remarry. 
Provided,  of  course,  that  the  parties  have  arranged  this  without 
"collusion."     That  is  to  say  that  our  law,  with  its  ecclesiastical 


454  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

traditions  behind  it,  says  to  the  wife:  Be  a  sinner,  or  to  the 
husband:  Be  a  sinner  and  a  criminal — then  we  will  do  all  you 
wish.  The  law  puts  a  premium  on  sin  and  on  crime.  In  order 
to  pile  absurdity  on  absurdity  it  claims  that  this  is  done  in  the 
cause  of  "public  morality."  To  those  who  accept  this  point  of 
view  it  seems  that  the  sweeping  away  of  divorce  laws  would 
undermine  the  bases  of  morality.  Yet  there  can  be  little  doubt 
that  the  sooner  such  "morality"  is  undermined,  and  indeed 
utterly  destroyed,  the  better  it  will  be  for  true  morality. 

There  is  an  influential  movement  in  England  for  the  reform  of 
divorce,  on  the  grounds  that  the  present  law  is  unjust,  illogical,  and 
immoral,  represented  by  the  Divorce  Law  Reform  Union.  Even  the 
former  president  of  the  Divorce  Court,  Lord  Gorell,  declared  from 
the  bench  in  1906  that  the  English  law  produces  deplorable  results,  and 
is  "full  of  inconsistencies,  anomalies  and  inequalities,  amounting  almost 
to  absurdities."  The  points  in  the  law  which  have  aroused  most  protest, 
as  being  most  behind  the  law  of  other  nations,  are  the  great  expense  of 
divorce,  the  inequality  of  the  sexes,  the  failure  to  grant  divorces  for 
desertion  and  in  cases  of  hopeless  insanity,  and  the  failure  of  separation 
orders  to  enable  the  separated  parties  to  marry  again.  Separation 
orders  are  granted  by  magistrates  for  cruelty,  adultery,  and  desertion. 
This  "separation"  is  really  the  direct  descendant  of  the  Canon  law 
divorce  a  mensa  et  thoro,  and  the  inability  to  marry  which  it  involves 
is  merely  a  survival  of  the  Canon  law  tradition.  At  the  present  time 
magistrates — exercising  their  discretion,  it  is  admitted,  in  a  careful  and 
prudent  manner — issue  some  7.000  separation  orders  annually,  so  that 
every  year  the  population  is  increased  by  14,000  individuals  mostly  in 
the  age  of  sexual  vigor,  and  some  little  more  than  children,  who  are  for- 
bidden by  law  to  form  legal  marriages.  They  contribute  powerfully  to 
the  great  forward  movement  which,  as  was  shown  in  the  previous  chap- 
ter, marks  the  morality  of  our  age.  But  it  is  highly  undesirable  that 
free  marriages  should  be  formed,  helplessly,  by  couples  who  have  no 
choice  in  the  matter,  for  it  is  unlikely  that  under  such  circumstances 
any  high  level  of  personal  responsibility  can  be  reached.  The  matter 
could  be  easily  remedied  by  dropping  altogether  a  Canon  law  tradition 
which  no  longer  has  any  vitality  or  meaning,  and  giving  to  the  magis- 
trate's separation  order  the  force  of  a  decree  of  divorce. 

New  Zealand  and  the  Australian  colonies,  led  by  Victoria  in  1889, 
have  passed  divorce  laws  which,  while  more  or  less  framed  on  the 
English  model,  represent  a  distinct  advance.  Thus  in  New  Zealand  the 
grounds  for  divorce  are  adultery  on  either  side,  wilful  desertion,  habitual 
drunkenness,  and  conviction  to  imprisonment  for  a  term  of  years. 


MARRIAGE,  455 

It  is  natural  that  an  Englishman  should  feel  acutely  sensi- 
tive to  this  blot  in  the  law  of  England  and  desire  the  speedy 
disappearance  of  a  system  so  open  to  scathing  sarcasm.  It  is 
natural  that  every  humane  person  should  grow  impatient  of  the 
spectacle  of  so  many  blighted  lives,  of  so  much  misery  inflicted 
on  innocent  persons — and  on  persons  who  even  when  technically 
guilty  are  often  the  victims  of  unnatural  circumstances — by  the 
persistence  of  a  mediasval  system  of  ecclesiastical  tyranny  and 
inquisitorial  insolence  into  an  age  when  sexual  relationships  are 
becoming  regarded  as  the  sacred  secret  of  the  persons  intimately 
concerned,  and  when  more  and  more  we  rely  on  the  responsibility 
of  the  individual  in  making  and  maintaining  such  relationships. 

When,  however,  we  refrain  from  concentrating  our  attention 
on  particular  countries  and  embrace  the  general  movement  of 
civilization  in  the  matter  of  divorce  during  recent  times,  there 
cannot  be  the  slightest  doubt  as  to  the  direction  of  that  move- 
ment. England  was  a  pioneer  in  the  movement  half  a  century 
ago,  and  to-day  every  civilized  country  is  moving  in  the  same 
direction.  France  broke  with  the  old  ecclesiastical  tradition  of 
the  indissolubility  of  matrimony  in  1885  by  a  divorce  law  in 
some  respects  very  reasonable.  The  wife  may  obtain  a  divorce 
on  an  equality  with  the  husband  (though  she  is  liable  to 
imprisonment  for  adultery),  the  co-respondent  occupies  a  very 
subordinate  position  in  adultery  charges,  and  facility  is  offered 
for  divorce  on  the  ground  of  simple  injures  graves  (excluding 
as  far  as  possible  mere  incompatibility  of  temper),  while  the 
judge  has  the  power,  which  he  often  successfully  exerts,  to 
effect  a  reconciliation  in  private  or  to  grant  a  decree  without 
public  trial.  The  influence  of  France  has  doubtless  been 
influential  in  moulding  the  divorce  laws  of  the  other  Latin 
countries. 

In  Prussia  an  enlightened  divorce  law  formerly  prevailed 
by  which  it  was  possible  for  a  couple  to  separate  without  scandal 
when  it  was  clearly  shown  that  they  could  not  live  together  in 
agreement.  But  the  German  Code  of  1900  introduced  pro- 
visions as  regards  divorce  which — while  in  some  respects  more 
liberal  than  those  of  the  English  law,  especially  by  permitting 


456  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SE2. 

divorce  for  desertion  and  insanity — are,  on  the  whole,  retrograde 
as  compared  with  the  earlier  Prussian  law  and  place  the  matter 
on  a  cruder  and  more  brutal  basis.  For  two  years  after  the  Code 
came  into  operations  the  number  of  divorces  sank ;  after  that  the 
public  and  the  courts  adapted  themselves  to  the  new  pro- 
visions (more  especially  one  which  allowed  divorce  for  serious 
neglect  of  conjugal  duties)  and  the  number  of  divorces  began  to 
increase  with  great  rapidity.  "But,"  remarks  Hirschfeld,  "how 
painful  it  has  now  become  to  read  divorce  cases !  One  side  abuses 
the  other,  makes  accusations  of  the  grossest  character,  employs 
detectives  to  obtain  the  necessary  proofs  of  'dishonorable  and 
immoral  conduct/  whereas,  before,  both  parties  realized  that  they 
had  been  deceived  in  each  other,  that  they  failed  to  suit  each 
other,  and  that  they  could  no  longer  live  together.  Thus  we 
see  that  the  narrowing  of  individual  responsibility  in  sexual 
matters  has  not  only  had  no  practical  effect,  but  leads  to  injurious 
results  of  a  serious  kind."1  In  England  a  similar  state  of 
things  has  prevailed  ever  since  divorce  was  established,  but  it 
seems  to  have  become  too  familiar  to  excite  either  pain  or  dis- 
gust. Yet,  as  Adner  has  pointed  out,2  it  has  moved  in  a  direc- 
tion contrary  to  the  general  tendency  of  civilization,  not  only  by 
increasing  the  inquisitorial  authority  of  public  courts  but  by 
emphasizing  merely  external  causes  of  divorce  and  abolishing  the 
more  subtle  internal  causes  which  constantly  grow  in  importance 
with  the  refinement  of  civilization. 

In  Austria  until  recent  years,  Canon  law  ruled  absolutely, 
and  matrimony  was  indissoluble,  as  it  still  remains  for  the 
Catholic  population.  The  results  as  regards  matrimonial  happi- 
ness were  in  the  highest  degree  deplorable.  Half  a  century  ago 
Gross-Hoffinger  investigated  the  marital  happiness  of  100 
Viennese  couples  of  all  social  classes,  without  choice  of  cases,  and 
presented  the  results  in  detail.  He  found  that  48  couples  were 
positively  unhappy,  only  16  were  undoubtedly  happy,  and  even 
among  these  there  was  only  one  case  in  which  happiness  resulted 

1  Magnus  Hirschfeld,  Zeitschrift  fur  Sexualwissenschaft,  Oct.,  1908. 

2  H.  Adner,  "Die  Richterliche  Beurteilung  der  'Zerriitteten'  Ehe," 
Geschlecht  und  Gesellschaft,  Bd,  ii,  Teil  8. 


MARRIAGE.  457 

from  mutual  faithfulness,  happiness  in  the  other  cases  being 
only  attained  by  setting  aside  the  question  of  fidelity.1  This 
picture,  it  is  to  be  hoped,  no  longer  remains  true.  There 
is  an  influential  Austrian  Marriage  Reform  Association,  publish- 
ing a  journal  called  Die  Fessel,  or  The  Fetter.  "One  was  chained 
to  another,"  we  are  told.  "In  certain  circumstances  this  must  have 
been  the  worst  and  most  torturing  penalty  of  all.  The  most 
bizarre  and  repulsive  couplings  took  place.  There  were,  it  is 
true,  many  affectionate  companionships  of  the  chain.  But  there 
were  many  more  which  inflicted  an  eternity  of  suffering  upon 
one  of  the  pair."  This  quotation,  it  must  be  added,  has  nothing 
to  do  with  what  the  Canonists,  borrowing  the  technical  term  for 
a  prisoner's  shackles,  suggestively  termed  the  vinculum  matri- 
monii; it  was  written  many  years  ago  concerning  the  galleys  of 
the  old  French  convict  system.  It  is,  however,  recalled  to  one's 
mind  by  the  title  which  the  Austrian  Marriage  Reform  Asso- 
ciation has  given  to  its  official  organ. 

Russia,  where  the  marriage  laws  are  arranged  by  the  Holy 
Synod  aided  by  jurists,  stands  almost  alone  among  the  great 
countries  in  the  reasonable  simplicity  of  its  divorce  provisions. 
Before  1907  divorce  was  very  difficult  to  obtain  in  Russia,  but  in 
that  year  it  became  possible  for  a  married  couple  to  separate 
by  mutual  consent  and  after  living  apart  for  a  year  to  become 
thereby  entitled  to  a  divorce  enabling  them  to  remarry.  This 
provision  is  in  accordance  with  the  humane  conception  of  the 
sexual  relationship  which  has  always  tended  to  prevail  in 
Russia,  whither,  it  must  be  remembered,  the  stern  and  unnatural 
ideals  of  compulsory  celibacy  cherished  by  the  Western  Church 
never  completely  penetrated;  the  clergy  of  the  Eastern  Church 
are  married,  though  the  marriage  must  take  place  before  they 
enter  the  priesthood,  and  they  could  not  sympathize  with  the 
anti-sexual  tone  of  the  marriage  regulations  laid  down  by  the 
celibate  clergy  of  the  west. 

Switzerland,  again,  which  has  been  regarded  as  the  political 

1  Gross-Hoffinger,  Die  Schichsale  der  Frauen  und  die  Prostitution, 
1847;  Bloch  presents  a  full  summary  of  the  results  of  this  inquiry  in 
an  Appendix  to  Ch.  X  of  his  Sexual  Life  of  Our  Times. 


458  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

laboratory  of  Europe,  also  stands  apart  in  the  liberality  of  its 
divorce  legislation.  A  renewable  divorce  for  two  years  may  be 
obtained  in  Switzerland  when  there  are  "circumstances  which 
seriously  affect  the  maintenance  of  the  conjugal  tie."  To  the 
Grand  Duchy  of  Luxembourg,  finalty,  belongs  the  honor  of  having 
firmly  maintained  throughout  the  great  principle  of  divorce  by 
mutual  consent  under  legal  conditions,  as  established  by  Napoleon 
in  his  Code  of  1803.  The  smaller  countries  generally  are  in 
advance  of  the  large  in  matters  of  divorce  law.  The  Norwegian 
law  is  liberal.  The  new  Eoumanian  Code  permits  divorce  by 
mutual  consent,  provided  both  parents  grant  equal  shares  of  their 
property  to  the  children.  The  little  principality  of  Monaco  has 
recently  introduced  the  reasonable  provision  of  granting  divorce 
for,  among  other  causes,  alcoholism,  syphilis,  and  epilepsy,  so 
protecting  the  future  race. 

Outside  Europe  the  most  instructive  example  of  the  tendency 
of  divorce  is  undoubtedly  furnished  by  the  United  States  of 
America.  The  divorce  laws  of  the  States  are  mainly  on  a  Puri- 
tanic basis,  and  they  retain  not  only  the  Puritanic  love  of 
individual  freedom  but  the  Puritanic  precisianism.1  In  some 
States,  notably  Iowa,  the  statute-makers  have  been  constantly 
engaged  in  adopting,  changing,  abrogating  and  re-enacting  the 
provisions  of  their  divorce  laws,  and  Howard  has  shown  how 
much  confusion  and  awkwardness  arise  by  such  perpetual  legisla- 
tive fiddling  over  small  details. 

This  restless  precisianism  has  somewhat  disguised  the  gen- 
erally broad  and  liberal  tendency  of  marriage  law  in  America, 
and  has  encouraged  foreign  criticism  of  American  social  institu- 
tions. As  a  matter  of  fact  the  prevalence  of  divorce  in  America 
is  enormously  exaggerated.  The  proportion  of  divorced  persons 
in  the  population  appears  to  be  less  than  one  per  cent.,  and,  con- 
trary to  a  frequent  assertion,  it  is  by  no  means  the  rule  for 
divorced  persons  to  remarry  immediately.  Taking  into  account 
the  special  conditions  of  life  in  the  United  States  the  prevalence 
of  divorce  is  small  and  its  character  by  no  means  reveals  a  low 


i  Divorce  in  the  United  States  is  fully  discussed  by  Howard,  op. 
cittj  vol.  iii. 


MARRIAGE.  459 

grade  morality.  An  impartial  and  competent  critic  of  the 
American  people,  Professor  Miinsterberg,  remarks  that  the  real 
ground  which  mainly  leads  to  divorce  in  the  United  States — not 
the  mere  legal  pretexts  made  compulsory  by  the  precisianism  of 
the  law — is  the  highly  ethical  objection  to  continuing  externally 
in  a  marriage  which  has  ceased  to  be  spiritually  congenial.  "It 
is  the  women  especially/'  he  says,  "and  generally  the  very  best 
women,  who  prefer  to  take  the  step,  with  all  the  hardships  which 
it  involves,  to  prolonging  a  marriage  which  is  spiritually  hypo- 
critical and  immoral/'1 

The  people  of  the  United  States,  above  all  others,  cherish 
ideals  of  individualism;  they  are  also  the  people  among  whom, 
above  all  others,  there  is  the  greatest  amount  of  what  Eeibmayr 
calls  "blood-chaos."  Under  such  circumstances  the  difficulties  of 
conjugal  life  are  necessarily  at  a  maximum,  and  marriage  union 
is  liable  to  subtle  impediments  which  must  forever  elude  the 
statute-book.2  There  can  be  little  doubt  that  the  practical  sagac- 
ity of  the  American  people  will  enable  them  sooner  or  later  to 
recognize  this  fact,  and  that  finally  fulfilling  the  Puritanic  drift 
of  their  divorce  legislation — as  foreshadowed  in  its  outcome  by 
Milton — they  will  agree  to  trust  their  own  citizens  with  the 
responsibility  of  deciding  so  private  a  matter  as  their  conjugal 

1 H.  Miinsterberg,  The  Americans,  p.  575.  Similarly,  Dr.  Felix 
Adler,  in  a  study  of  "The  Ethics  of  Divorce"  (The  Ethical  Record,  1390, 
p.  200),  although  not  himself  an  admirer  of  divorce,  believes  that  the 
first  cause  of  the  frequency  of  divorce  in  the  United  States  is  the  high 
position  of  women. 

2  In  an  important  article,  with  illustrative  cases,  on  "The  Neuro- 
psyehical  Element  in  Conjugal  Aversion"  (Journal  of  Nervous  and 
Mental  Diseases,  Sept.,  1892)  Smith  Baker  refers  to  the  cases  in  which 
"a  man  may  find  himself  progressively  becoming  antipathetic,  through 
recognition  of  the  comparatively  less  developed  personality  of  the  one  to 
whom  he  happens  to  be  married.  Marrying,  perhaps,  before  he  has 
learned  to  accurately  judge  of  character  and  its  tendencies,  he  awakens 
to  the  fact  that  he  is  honorably  bound  to  live  all  his  physiological  life 
with,  not  a  real  companion,  but  a  mere  counterfeit."  The  cases  are  still 
more  numerous,  the  same  writer  observes,  in  which  the  sexual  appetite 
of  the  wife  fails  to  reveal  itself  except  as  the  result  of  education  and 
practice.  "This  sort  of  natural-unnatural  condition  is  the  source  of  much 
disappointment,  and  of  intense  suffering  on  the  part  of  the  woman  as 
well  as  of  family  dissatisfaction."  Yet  such  causes  for  divorce  are  far 
too  complex  to  be  stated  in  statute-books,  and  far  too  intimate  to  be 
pleaded  in  courts  of  justice. 


460  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

relationships,  with,  of  course,  authority  in  the  courts  to  see  that 
no  injustice  is  committed.  It  is,  indeed,  surprising  that  the 
American  people,  usually  intolerant  of  State  interference,  should 
in  this  matter  so  long  have  tolerated  such  interference  in  so 
private  a  matter. 

The  movement  of  divorce  is  not  confined  to  Christendom; 
it  is  a  mark  of  modern  civilization.  In  Japan  the  proportion  of 
divorces  is  higher  than  in  any  other  country,  not  excluding  the 
United  States.1  The  most  vigorous  and  progressive  countries 
are  those  that  insist  most  firmly  on  the  purity  of  sexual  unions. 
In  the  United  States  it  was  pointed  out  many  years  ago  that 
divorce  is  most  prevalent  where  the  standard  of  education  and 
morality  is  highest.  It  was  the  New  England  States,  with 
strong  Puritanic  traditions  of  moral  freedom,  which  took  the 
lead  in  granting  facility  to  divorce.  The  divorce  movement  is 
not,  as  some  have  foolishly  supposed,  a  movement  making  for 
immorality.2  Immorality  is  the  inevitable  accompaniment  of 
indissoluble  marriage;  the  emphasis  on  the  sanctity  of  a  merely 
formal  union  discourages  the  growth  of  moral  responsibility  as 
regards  the  hypothetically  unholy  unions  which  grow  up  beneath 
its  shadow.  To  insist,  on  the  other  hand,  by  establishing  facility 
of  divorce,  that  sexual  unions  shall  be  real,  is  to  work  in  the 
cause  of  morality.  The  lands  in  which  divorce  by  mutual  con- 
sent has  prevailed  longest  are  probably  among  the  most,  and  not 
the  least,  moral  of  lands. 

Surprise  has  been  expressed  that  although  divorce  by  mutual 
consent  commended  itself  as  an  obviously  just  and  reasonable 
measure  two  thousand  years  ago  to  the  legally-minded  Eomans 
that  solution  has  even  yet  been  so  rarely  attained  by  modern 
states.3  Wherever  society  is  established  on  a  solidly  organized 
basis  and  the  claims  of  reason  and  humanity  receive  due  con- 
sideration— even  when  the  general  level  of  civilization  is  not 

i  Ten  years  ago,  if  not  still,  the  United  States  came  fourth  in  order 
of  frequency  of  divorce,  after  Japan,  Denmark,  and  Switzerland. 

2  Lecky,  the  historian  of  European  morals,  has  pointed  out  (Democ- 
racy and  Liberty,  vol.  ii,  p.  172)  the  close  connection  generally  between 
facility  of  divorce  and  a  high  standard  of  sexual  morality. 

3  So,  e.g.,  Hobhouse,  Morals  in  Evolution,  vol.  i,  p.  237. 


MARRIAGE.  461 

in  every  respect  high — there  we  find  a  tendency  to  divorce  by 
mutual  consent. 

In  Japan,  according  to  the  new  Civil  Code,  much  as  in  ancient 
Rome,  marriage  is  effected  by  giving  notice  of  the  fact  to  the  registrar  in 
the  presence  of  two  witnesses,  and  with  the  consent  ( in  the  case  of  young 
couples)  of  the  heads  of  their  families.  There  may  be  a  ceremony,  but 
it  is  not  demanded  by  the  law.  Divorce  is  effected  in  exactly  the  same 
way,  by  simply  having  the  registration  cancelled,  provided  both  husband 
and  wife  are  over  twenty-five  years  of  age.  For  younger  couples 
unhappily  married,  and  for  cases  in  which  mutual  consent  cannot  be 
obtained,  judicial  divorce  exists.  This  is  granted  for  various  specific 
causes,  of  which  the  most  important  is  "grave  insult,  such  as  to  render 
living  together  unbearable"  (Ernest  W.  Clement,  "The  New  Woman  in 
Japan,"  American  Journal  Sociology,  March,  1903).  Such  a  system,  like 
so  much  else  achieved  by  Japanese  organization,  seems  reasonable, 
guarded,  and  effective. 

In  the  very  different  and  far  more  ancient  marriage  system  of 
China,  divorce  by  mutual  consent  is  equally  well-established.  Such 
divorce  by  mutual  consent  takes  place  for  incompatibility  of  tempera- 
ment, or  when  both  husband  and  wife  desire  it.  There  are,  however, 
various  antiquated  and  peculiar  provisions  in  the  Chinese  marriage  laws, 
and  divorce  is  compulsory  for  the  wife's  adultery  or  serious  physical 
injuries  inflicted  by  either  party  on  the  other.  (The  marriage  laws  of 
China  are  fully  set  forth  by  Paul  d'Enjoy,  La  Revue,  Sept.  1,  1905.) 

Among  the  Eskimo  (who,  as  readers  of  Nansen's  fascinating  books 
on  their  morals  will  know,  are  in  some  respects  a  highly  socialized  peo- 
ple) the  sexes  are  absolutely  equal,  marriages  are  perfectly  free,  and 
separation  is  equally  free.  The  result  is  that  there  are  no  uncongenial 
unions,  and  that  no  unpleasant  word  is  heard  between  man  and  wife 
(Stefansson,  Harper's  Magazine,  Nov.,  1908). 

Among  the  ancient  Welsh,  women,  both  before  and  after  marriage, 
enjoyed  great  freedom,  far  more  than  was  afforded  either  by  Christianity 
or  the  English  Common  law.  "Practically  either  husband  or  wife  could 
separate  when  either  one  or  both  chose"  (Rhys  and  Brynmor- Jones,  The 
Welsh  People,  p.  214).  It  was  so  also  in  ancient  Ireland.  Women  held 
a  very  high  position,  and  the  marriage  tie  was  very  free,  so  as  to  be 
practically,  it  would  appear,  dissoluble  by  mutual  consent.  So  far  as  the 
Erehon  laws  show,  says  Ginnell  (The  Brehon  Laws,  p.  212),  "the  mar- 
riage relation  was  extremely  loose,  and  divorce  was  as  easy,  and  could 
be  obtained  on  as  slight  ground,  as  is  now  the  case  in  some  of  the  States 
of  the  American  Union.  It  appears  to  have  been  obtained  more  easily 
by  the  wife  than  by  the  husband.  When  obtained  on  her  petition,  she 
took  away  with  her  all  the  property  she  had  brought  her  husband,  all 


462  PSYCHOLOGY    OP    SEX. 

her  husband  had  settled  upon  her  on  their  marriage,  and  in  addition  so 
much  of  her  husband's  property  as  her  industry  appeared  to  have  entitled 
her  to." 

Even  in  early  French  history  we  find  that  divorce  by  mutual  con- 
sent was  very  common.  It  was  sufficient  to  prepare  in  duplicate  a  formal 
document  to  this  effect:  "Since  between  N.  and  his  wife  there  is  discord 
instead  of  charity  according  to  God,  and  that  in  consequence  it  is  impos- 
sible for  them  to  live  together,  it  has  pleased  both  to  separate,  and  they 
have  accordingly  done  so."  Each  of  the  parties  was  thus  free  either  to 
retire  into  a  cloister  or  to  contract  another  union  (E.  de  la  Bedolliere, 
Histoire  des  Mceurs  des  Frangais,  vol.  i,  p.  317).  Such  a  practice,  how- 
ever it  might  accord  with  the  germinal  principle  of  consent  embodied  in 
the  Canon  law,  was  far  too  opposed  to  the  ecclesiastical  doctrine  of  the 
sacramental  indissolubility  of  matrimony  to  be  permanently  allowed,  and 
it  was  completely  crushed  out. 

The  fact  that  we  so  rarely  find  divorce  by  mutual  consent  in 
Christendom  until  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century,  that 
then  it  required  a  man  of  stupendous  and  revolutionary  genius 
like  Napoleon  to  re-introduce  it,  and  that  even  he  was  unable  to 
do  so  effectually,  is  clearly  due  to  the  immense  victory  which  the 
ascetic  spirit  of  Christianity,  as  firmly  embodied  in  the  Canon 
law,  had  gained  over  the  souls  and  bodies  of  men.  So  subjugated 
were  European  traditions  and  institutions  by  this  spirit  that 
even  the  volcanic  emotional  uprising  of  the  Eeformation,  as  we 
have  seen,  could  not  shake  it  off.  When  Protestant  States 
naturally  resumed  the  control  of  secular  affairs  which  had  been 
absorbed  by  the  Church,  and  rescued  from  ecclesiastical  hands 
those  things  which  belonged  to  the  sphere  of  the  individual  eon- 
science,  it  might  have  seemed  that  marriage  and  divorce  would 
have  been  among  the  first  concerns  to  be  thus  transferred.  Yet, 
as  we  know,  England  was  about  as  much  enslaved  to  the  spirit 
and  even  the  letter  of  Canon  law  in  the  nineteenth  as  in  the 
fourteenth  century,  and  even  to-day  English  law,  though  no 
longer  supported  by  the  feeling  of  the  masses,  clings  to  the  same 
traditions. 

There  seems  to  be  little  doubt,  however,  that  the  modern 
movement  for  divorce  must  inevitably  tend  to  reach  the  goal 
of  separation  by  the  will  of  both  parties,  or,  under  proper  con- 


MARRIAGE.  463 

ditions  and  restrictions,  by  the  will  of  one  party.  It  now 
requires  the  will  of  two  persons  to  form  a  marriage;  law  insists 
on  that  condition.1  It  is  logical  as  well  as  just  that  law  should 
take  the  next  step  involved  by  the  historical  evolution  of  mar- 
riage, and  equally  insist  that  it  requires  the  will  of  two  persons 
to  maintain  a  marriage.  This  solution  is,  without  doubt,  the 
only  way  of  deliverance  from  the  crudities,  the  indecencies,  the 
inextricable  complexities  which  are  introduced  into  law  by  the 
vain  attempt  to  foresee  in  detail  all  the  possibilities  of  conjugal 
disharmony  which  may  arise  under  the  conditions  of  modern 
civilization.  It  is,  moreover,  we  may  rest  assured,  the  only  solu- 
tion which  the  growing  modern  sense  of  personal  responsibility 
in  sexual  matters  traced  in  the  previous  chapter — the  respon- 
sibility of  women  as  well  as  of  men — will  be  content  to  accept. 

The  subtle  and  complex  character  of  the  sexual  relationships  in  a 
high  civilization  and  the  unhappy  results  of  their  State  regulation  were 
well  expressed  by  Wilhelm  von  Humboldt  in  his  Ideen  zu  einen  Versuch 
die  Grenzen  der  WirJcsainkeit  des  Staates  zu  bestimmen,  so  long  ago  as 
1792.  "A  union  so  closely  allied  with  the  very  nature  of  the  respective 
individuals  must  be  attended  with  the  most  hurtful  consequences  when 
the  State  attempts  to  regulate  it  by  law,  or,  through  the  force  of  its 
institutions,  to  make  it  repose  on  anything  save  simple  inclination. 
When  we  remember,  moreover,  that  the  State  can  only  contemplate  the 
final  results  of  such  regulations  on  the  race,  we  shall  be  still  more  ready 
to  admit  the  justice  of  this  conclusion.  It  may  reasonably  be  argued 
that  a  solicitude  for  the  race  only  conducts  to  the  same  results  as  the 
highest  solicitude  for  the  most  beautiful  development  of  the  inner  man. 
For,  after  careful  observation,  it  has  been  found  that  the  uninterrupted 
union  of  one  man  with  one  woman  is  most  beneficial  to  the  race,  and 
it  is  likewise  undeniable  that  no  other  union  springs  from  true,  natural, 
harmonious  love.  And  further,  it  may  be  observed,  that  such  love  leads 
to  the  same  results  as  those  very  relations  which  law  and  custom  tend 
to  establish.  The  radical  error  seems  to  be  that  the  law  commands; 
whereas  such  a  relation  cannot  mould  itself  according  to  external 
arrangements,  but  depends  wholly  on  inclination;    and  wherever  coercion 


1  In  England  this  step  was  taken  in  the  reign  of  Henry  VII,  when 
the  forcible  marriage  of  women  against  their  will  was  forbidden  by 
statute  (3  Henry  VII,  c.  2).  Even  in  the  middle  of  the  seventeenth  cen- 
tury, however,  the  question  of  forcible  marriage  had  again  to  be  dealt 
with  (Inderwick,  Interregnum,  pp.  40  et  seq.). 


464  PSYCHOLOGY    OP    SEX. 

or  guidance  comes  into  collision  with  inclination,  they  divert  it  still 
farther  from  the  proper  path.  Wherefore  it  appears  to  me  that  the  State 
should  not  only  loosen  the  bonds  in  this  instance  and  leave  ampler  free- 
dom to  the  citizen,  but  that  it  should  entirely  withdraw  its  active 
solicitude  from  the  institution  of  marriage,  and,  both  generally  and  in 
its  particular  modifications,  should  rather  leave  it  wholly  to  the  free 
choice  of  the  individuals,  and  the  various  contracts  they  may  enter  into 
with  respect  to  it.  I  should  not  be  deterred  from  the  adoption  of  this 
principle  by  the  fear  that  all  family  relations  might  be  disturbed,  for, 
although  such  a  fear  might  be  justified  by  considerations  of  particular 
circumstances  and  localities,  it  could  not  fairly  be  entertained  in  an 
inquiry  into  the  nature  of  men  and  States  in  general.  For  experience 
frequently  convinces  us  that  just  where  law  has  imposed  no  fetters, 
morality  most  surely  binds ;  the  idea  of  external  coercion  is  one  entirely 
foreign  to  an  institution  which,  like  marriage,  reposes  only  on  inclina- 
tion and  an  inward  sense  of  duty;  and  the  results  of  such  coercive 
institutions  do  not  at  all  correspond  to  the  intentions  in  which  they 
originate." 

A  long  succession  of  distinguished  thinkers — moralists,  sociologists, 
political  reformers — have  maintained  the  social  advantages  of  divorce  by 
mutual  consent,  or,  under  guarded  circumstances,  at  the  wish  of  one 
party.  Mutual  consent  was  the  corner-stone  of  Milton's  conception  of 
marriage.  Montesquieu  said  that  true  divorce  must  be  the  result  of 
mutual  consent  and  based  on  the  impossibility  of  living  together.  Sen- 
ancour  seems  to  agree  with  Montesquieu.  Lord  Morley  (Diderot,  vol. 
ii,  Ch.  I),  echoing  and  approving  the  conclusions  of  Diderot's  Supple- 
ment au  Voyage  de  Bougainville  (1772),  acids  that  the  separation  of 
husband  and  wife  is  "a  transaction  in  itself  perfectly  natural  and  blame- 
less, and  often  not  only  laudable,  but  a  duty."  Bloch  [Sexual  Life  of 
Our  Time,  p.  240),  with  many  other  writers,  emphasizes  the  truth  of 
Shelley's  saying,  that  the  freedom  of  marriage  is  the  guarantee  of  its 
durability.  (That  the  facts  of  life  point  in  the  same  direction  has  been 
shown  in  the  previous  chapter.)  The  learned  Caspari  (Die  Soziale 
Frage  uber  die  Freiheit  der  Ehe) ,  while  disclaiming  any  prevision  of  the 
future,  declares  that  if  sexual  relationships  are  to  remain  or  to  become 
moral,  there  must  be  an  easier  dissolution  of  marriage.  Howard,  at  the 
conclusion  of  his  exhaustive  history  of  matrimonial  institutions  (vol. 
iii,  p.  220),  though  he  himself  believes  that  marriage  is  peculiarly  in 
need  of  regulation  by  law,  is  yet  constrained  to  admit  that  it  is  perfectly 
clear  to  the  student  of  history  that  the  modern  divorce  movement  is  "but 
a  part  of  the  mighty  movement  for  social  liberation  which  has  been 
gaining  in  volume  and  strength  since  the  Reformation."  Similarly  the 
cautious  and  judicial  Westermarck  concludes  the  chapter  on  marriage  of 
his  Origin  and  Development  of  the  Moral  Ideas  (vol.  ii,  p.  398)  with  the 


MAREIAGE.  465 

statement  that  "when  both  husband  and  wife  desire  to  separate,  it  seems 
to  many  enlightened  minds  that  the  State  has  no  right  to  prevent  them 
from  dissolving  the  marriage  contract,  provided  the  children  are  properly 
cared  for;  and  that,  for  the  children,  also,  it  is  better  to  have  the  super- 
vision of  one  parent  only  than  of  two  who  cannot  agree." 

In  France  the  leaders  of  the  movement  of  social  reform  seem  to  be 
almost,  or  quite,  unanimous  in  believing  that  the  next  step  in  regard  to 
divorce  is  the  establishment  of  divorce  by  mutual  consent.  This  was,  for 
instance,  the  result  reached  in  a  symposium  to  which  thirty-one  distin- 
guished men  and  women  contributed.  All  were  in  favor  of  divorce  by 
mutual  consent;  the  only  exception  was  Madame  Adam,  who  said  she 
had  reached  a  state  of  skepticism  with  regard  to  political  and  social 
forms,  but  admitted  that  for  nearly  half  a  century  she  had  been  a  strong 
advocate  of  divorce.  A  large  number  of  the  contributors  were  in  favor 
of  divorce  at  the  desire  of  one  party  only  (La  Revue,  March  1,  1901). 
In  other  countries,  also,  there  is  a  growing  recognition  that  this  solution 
of  the  question,  with  due  precautions  to  avoid  any  abuses  to  which  it 
might  otherwise  be  liable,  is  the  proper  and  inevitable  solution. 

As  to  the  exact  method  by  which  divorce  by  mutual  consent  should 
be  effected,  opinions  differ,  and  the  matter  is  likely  to  be  differently 
arranged  in  different  countries.  The  Japanese  plan  seems  simple  and 
judicious  (see  ante,  p.  461).  Paul  and  Victor  Margueritte  (Quelques 
Idees,  pp.  3  et  seq. ) ,  while  realizing  that  the  conflict  of  feeling  in  the 
matter  of  personal  associations  involves  decisions  which  are  entirely  out- 
side the  competence  of  legal  tribunals,  recognize  that  such  tribunals  are 
necessary  in  order  to  deal  with  the  property  of  divorced  persons,  and 
also,  in  the  last  resort,  with  the  question  of  the  care  of  the  children. 
They  should  not  act  in  public.  These  writers  propose  that  each  party 
should  choose  a  representative,  and  that  these  two  should  choose  a  third ; 
and  that  this  tribunal  should  privately  investigate,  and  if  they  agreed 
should  register  the  divorce,  which  should  take  place  six  or  twelve  months 
later,  or  three  years  later,  if  only  desired  by  one  of  the  parties.  Dr. 
Shufeldt  ( "Psychopathia  Sexualis  and  Divorce")  proposes  that  a  divorce- 
court  judge  should  conduct,  alone,  the  hearing  of  any  cases  of  marital 
discord,  the  husband  and  wife  appearing  directly  before  him,  without 
counsel,  though  with  their  witnesses,  if  necessary;  should  medical 
experts  be  required  the  judge  alone  would  be  empowered  to  call  them. 

When  we  realize  that  the  long  delay  in  the  acceptance  of  so 

just  and  natural  a  basis  of  divorce  is  due  to  an  artificial  tension 

created  by  the  pressure  of  the  dead  hand  of  Canon  law — a  tension 

confined  exclusively  to  Christendom — we  may  also  realize  that 

with,  the  final  disappearance  of  that  tension  the  just  and  natural 

so 


466  PSYCHOLOGY    OP    SEX. 

order  in  this  relationship  will  spring  back  the  more  swiftly 
because  that  relief  has  been  so  long  delayed.  "Nature  abhors 
a  vacuum  nowhere  more  than  in  a  marriage/'  Ellen  Key  remarks 
in  the  language  of  antiquated  physical  metaphor ;  the  vacuum  will 
somehow  be  filled,  and  if  it  cannot  be  filled  in  a  natural  and 
orderly  manner  it  will  be  filled  in  an  unnatural  and  disorderly 
manner.  It  is  the  business  of  society  to  see  that  no  laws  stand  in 
the  way  of  the  establishment  of  natural  order. 

Eeform  upon  a  reasonable  basis  has  been  made  difficult  by 
the  unfortunate  retention  of  the  idea  of  delinquency.  With  the 
traditions  of  the  Canonists  at  the  back  of  our  heads  we  have  some- 
how persuaded  ourselves  that  there  cannot  be  a  divorce  unless 
there  is  a  delinquent,  a  real  serious  delinquent  who,  if  he  had  his 
deserts,  would  be  imprisoned  and  consigned  to  infamy.  But 
in  the  marriage  relationship,  as  in  all  other  relationships,  it  is 
only  in  a  very  small  number  of  cases  that  one  party  stands 
towards  the  other  as  a  criminal,  even  a  defendant.  This  is  often 
obvious  in  the  early  stages  of  conjugal  alienation.  But  it  remains 
true  in  the  end.  The  wife  commits  adultery  and  the  husband  as 
a  matter  of  course  assumes  the  position  of  plaintiff.  But  we  do 
not  inquire  how  it  is  that  he  has  not  so  won  her  love  that  her 
adultery  is  out  of  the  question ;  such  inquiry  might  lead  to  the 
conclusion  that  the  real  defendant  is  the  husband.  And  similarly 
when  the  husband  is  accused  of  brutal  cruelty  the  law  takes  no 
heed  to  inquire  whether  in  the  infliction  of  less  brutal  but  not  less 
poignant  wounds,  the  wife  also  should  not  be  made  defendant. 
There  are  a  few  cases,  but  only  a  few,  in  which  the  relationship  of 
plaintiff  and  defendant  is  not  a  totally  false  and  artificial  rela- 
tionship, an  immoral  legal  fiction.  In  most  cases,  if  the  truth 
were  fully  known,  husband  and  wife  should  come  side  by  side  to 
the  divorce  court  and  declare:  "We  are  both  in  the  wrong:  we 
have  not  been  able  to  fulfil  our  engagements  to  each  other;  we 
have  erred  in  choosing  each  other."  The  long  reports  of  the  case 
in  open  court,  the  mutual  recriminations,  the  detectives,  the 
servant  girls  and  other  witnesses,  the  infamous  inquisition  into 
intimate  secrets — all  these  things,  which  no  necessity  could  ever 
justify,  are  altogether  unnecessary. 


MARRIAGE.  467 

It  is  said  by  some  that  if  there  were  no  impediments  to 
divorce  a  man  might  be  married  in  succession  to  half  a  dozen 
women.  These  simple-minded  or  ignorant  persons  do  not  seem 
to  be  aware  that  even  when  marriage  is  absolutely  indissoluble  a 
man  can,  and  frequently  does,  carry  on  sexual  relationships  not 
merely  successively,  but,  if  he  chooses,  even  simultaneously,  with 
half  a  dozen  women.  There  is,  however,  this  important  differ- 
ence that,  in  the  one  case,  the  man  is  encouraged  by  the  law  to 
believe  that  he  need  only  treat  at  most  one  of  the  six  women  with 
anything  approaching  to  justice  and  humanity ;  in  the  other  case 
the  law  insists  that  he  shall  fairly  and  openly  fulfil  his  obligations 
towards  all  the  six  women.  It  is  a  very  important  difference, 
and  there  ought  to  be  no  question  as  to  which  state  of  things  is 
moral  and  which  immoral.  It  is  no  concern  of  the  State  to 
inquire  into  the  number  of  persons  with  whom  a  man  or  a 
woman  chooses  to  have  sexual  relationships ;  it  is  a  private  matter 
which  may  indeed  affect  their  own  finer  spiritual  development 
but  which  it  is  impertinent  for  the  State  to  pry  into.  It  is, 
however,  the  concern  of  the  State,  in  its  own  collective  interest 
and  that  of  its  members,  to  see  that  no  injustice  is  done. 

But  what  about  the  children?  That  is  necessarily  a  very 
important  question.  The  question  of  the  arrangements  made 
for  the  children  in  cases  of  divorce  is  always  one  to  which  the 
State  must  give  its  regulative  attention,  for  it  is  only  when  there 
are  children  that  the  State  has  any  real  concern  in  the  matter. 

At  one  time  it  was  even  supposed  by  some  that  the  existence 
of  children  was  a  serious  argument  against  facility  of  divorce. 
A  more  reasonable  view  is  now  generally  taken.  It  is,  in  the 
first  place,  recognized  that  a  very  large  proportion  of  couples 
seeking  divorce  have  no  children.  In  England  the  proportion 
is  about  forty  per  cent. ;  in  some  other  countries  it  is  doubtless 
larger  still.  But  even  when  there  are  children  no  one  who 
realizes  what  the  conditions  are  in  families  where  the  parents 
ought  to  be  but  are  not  divorced  can  have  any  doubt  that  usually 
those  conditions  are  extremely  bad  for  the  children.  The  tension 
between  the  parents  absorbs  energy  which  should  be  devoted  to 
the   children.    The    spectacle   of    the   grievances    or    quarrels 


468  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

of  their  parents  is  demoralizing  for  the  children,  and  usually 
fatal  to  any  respect  towards  them.  At  the  best  it  is  injuriously 
distressing  to  the  children.  One  effective  parent,  there  cannot 
be  the  slightest  doubt,  is  far  better  for  a  child  than  two  ineffec- 
tive parents.  There  is  a  further  point,  often  overlooked,  for 
consideration  here.  Two  people  when  living  together  at  variance 
— one  of  them  perhaps,  it  is  not  rarely  the  case,  nervously 
abnormal  or  diseased — are  not  fitted  to  become  parents,  nor  in 
the  best  condition  for  procreation.  It  is,  therefore,  not  merely 
an  act  of  justice  to  the  individual,  but  a  measure  called  for  in 
the  interests  of  the  State,  that  new  citizens  should  not  be  brought 
into  the  community  through  such  defective  channels.1  From 
this  point  of  view  all  the  interests  of  the  State  are  on  the  side 
of  facility  of  divorce. 

There  is  a  final  argument  which  is  often  brought  forward 
against  facility  of  divorce.  Marriage,  it  is  said,  is  for  the  pro- 
tection of  women;  facilitate  divorce  and  women  are  robbed  of 
that  protection.  It  is  obvious  that  this  argument  has  little 
application  as  against  divorce  by  mutual  consent.  Certainly  it  is 
necessary  that  divorce  should  only  be  arranged  under  conditions 
which  in  each  individual  case  have  received  the  approval  of  the 
law  as  just.  But  it  must  always  be  remembered  that  the  essential 
fact  of  marriage  is  not  naturally,  and  should  never  artificially  be 
made,  an  economic  question.  It  is  possible — that  is  a  question 
which  society  will  have  to  consider — that  a  woman  should  be 
paid  for  being  a  mother  on  the  ground  that  she  is  rearing  new 
citizens  for  the  State.  But  neither  the  State  nor  her  husband 
nor  anyone  else  ought  to  pay  her  for  exercising  conjugal  rights. 
The  fact  that  such  an  argument  can  be  brought  forward  shows 
how  far  we  are  from  the  sound  biological  attitude  towards  sexual 
relationships.  Equally  unsound  is  the  notion  that  the  virgin 
bride  brings  her  husband  at  marriage  an  important  capital  which 
is  consumed  in  the  first  act  of  intercourse  and  can  never  be 


1  Woods  Hutchinson  {Contemporary  Review,  Sept.,  1905)  argues 
that  when  there  is  epilepsy,  insanity,  moral  perversion,  habitual  drunk- 
enness, or  criminal  conduct  of  any  kind,  divorce,  for  the  sake  of  the  next 
generation,  should  be  not  permissive  but  compulsory.  Mere  divorce, 
however,  would  not  suffice  to  attain  the  ends  desired. 


MARRIAGE.  469 

recovered.  That  is  a  notion  which  has  survived  into  civilization, 
but  it  belongs  to  barbarism  and  not  to  civilization.  So  far  as 
it  has  any  validity  it  lies  within  a  sphere  of  erotic  perversity 
which  cannot  be  taken  into  consideration  in  an  estimation  of 
moral  values.  For  most  men,  however,  in  any  case,  whether  they 
realize  it  or  not,  the  woman  who  has  been  initiated  into  the 
mysteries  of  love  has  a  higher  erotic  value  than  the  virgin,  and 
there  need  be  no  anxiety  on  this  ground  concerning  the  wife  who 
has  lost  her  virginity.  It  is  probably  a  significant  fact  that  this 
anxiety  for  the  protection  of  women  by  the  limitation  of  divorce 
is  chiefly  brought  forward  by  men  and  not  by  women  themselves. 
A  woman  at  marriage  is  deprived  by  society  and  the  law  of  her 
own  name.  She  has  been  deprived  until  recently  of  the  right  to 
her  own  earnings.  She  is  deprived  of  the  most  intimate  rights 
in  her  own  person.  She  is  deprived  under  some  circumstances  of 
her  own  child,  against  whom  she  may  have  committed  no  offence 
whatever.  It  is  perhaps  scarcely  surprising  that  she  is  not 
greatly  appreciative  of  the  protection  afforded  her  by  the  with- 
holding of  the  right  to  divorce  her  husband.  "Ah,  no,  no  pro- 
tection !"  a  brilliant  French  woman  has  written.  "We  have  been 
protected  long  enough.  The  only  protection  to  grant  women  is 
to  cease  protecting  them."1  As  a  matter  of  fact  the  divorce  move- 
ment appears  to  develop,  on  the  whole,  with  that  development  of 
woman's  moral  responsibility  traced  in  the  previous  chapter,  and 
where  divorce  is  freest  women  occupy  the  highest  position. 

We  cannot  fail  to  realize  as  we  grasp  the  nature  and  direction 
of  the  modern  movement  of  divorce  that  the  final  tendency  of 
that  movement  is  to  efface  itself.     Necessary  as  the   Divorce 


1  Similarly  in  Germany,  Wanda  von  Sacher-Masoeh,  who  had  suf- 
fered much  from  marriage,  whatever  her  own  defects  of  character  may 
have  been,  writes  at  the  end  of  Meine  Lebensbeichte  that  "as  long  as 
women  have  not  the  courage  to  regulate,  without  State-interference  or 
Church-interference,  relationships  which  concern  themselves  alone,  they 
will  not  be  free."  In  place  of  this  old  decayed  system  of  marriage  so 
opposed  to  our  modern  thoughts  and  feelings,  she  would  have  private 
contracts  made  by  a  lawyer.  In  England,  at  a  much  earlier  period, 
Charles  Kingsley,  who  was  an  ardent  friend  to  women's  movements,  and 
whose  feeling  for  womanhood  amounted  almost  to  worship,  wrote  to  J. 
S.  Mill:  "There  will  never  be  a  good  world  for  women  until  the  last 
remnant  of  the  Canon  law  is  civilized  off  the  earth." 


470  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    8EX. 

Court  has  been  as  the  inevitable  corollary  of  an  impossible 
ecclesiastical  conception  of  marriage,  no  institution  is  now  more 
hideous,  more  alien  to  the  instinctive  feelings  generated  by  a 
fine  civilization,  and  more  opposed  to  the  dignity  of  womanhood.1 
Its  disappearance  and  its  substitution  by  private  arrangements, 
effected  on  their  contractive  sides,  especially  if  there  are  children 
to  provide  for,  under  legal  and  if  necessary  judicial  supervision, 
is,  and  always  has  been,  the  natural  result  of  the  attainment  of  a 
reasonably  high  stage  of  civilization.  The  Divorce  Court  has 
merely  been  a  phase  in  the  history  of  modern  marriage,  and  a 
phase  that  has  really  been  repugnant  to  all  concerned  in  it. 
There  is  no  need  to  view  the  project  of  its  ultimate  disappearance 
with  anything  but  satisfaction.  It  was  merely  the  outcome  of  an 
artificial  conception  of  marriage.  It  is  time  to  return  to  the 
consideration  of  that  conception. 

We  have  seen  that  when  the  Catholic  development  of  the 
archaic  conception  of  marriage  as  a  sacrament,  slowly  elaborated 
and  fossilized  by  the  ingenuity  of  the  Canonists,  was  at  last  nom- 
inally dethroned,  though  not  destroyed,  by  the  movement  asso- 
ciated with  the  Eeformation,  it  was  replaced  by  the  conception 
of  marriage  as  a  contract.  This  conception  of  marriage  as  a 
contract  still  enjoys  a  considerable  amount  of  credit  amongst  us. 

There  must  always  i*-e  contractive  elements,  implicit  or 
explicit,  in  a  marriage;  that  was  well  recognized  even  by  the 
Canonists.  But  when  we  treat  marriage  as  all  contract,  and 
nothing  but  contract,  we  have  to  realize  that  we  have  set  up  a  very 
peculiar  form  of  contract,  not  voidable,  like  other  contracts,  by 
the  agreement  of  the  parties  to  it,  but  dissoluble  as  a  sort  of 
punishment  of  delinquency  rather  than  by  the  voluntary  annul- 
ment of  a  bond.2     When  the  Protestant  Eeformers  seized  on  the 


i  "No  fouler  institution  was  ever  invented,"  declared  Auberon  Her- 
bert many  years  ago,  expressing,  before  its  time,  a  feeling  which  has 
since  become  more  common;  "and  its  existence  drags  on,  to  our  deep 
shame,  because  we  have  not  the  courage  frankly  to  say  that  the  sexual 
relations  of  husband  and  wife,  or  those  Avho  live  together,  concern  their 
own  selves,  and  do  not  concern  the  prying,  gloating,  self-righteous,  and 
intensely  untruthful  world  outside." 

2  Hobhouse,  op  cit.s  vol.  i,  p.  237. 


MARRIAGE.  471 

idea  of  marriage  as  a  contract  they  were  not  influenced  by  any 
reasoned  analysis  of  the  special  characteristics  of  a  contract ;  they 
were  merely  anxious  to  secure  a  plausible  ground,  already 
admitted  even  by  the  Canonists  to  cover  certain  aspects  of  the 
matrimonial  union,  on  which  they  could  declare  that  marriage  is 
a  secular  and  not  an  ecclesiastical  matter,  a  civil  bond  and  not 
a  sacramental  process.1 

Like  so  much  else  in  the  Protestant  revolt,  the  strength  of 
this  attitude  lay  in  the  fact  that  it  was  a  protest,  based  on  its 
negative  side  on  reasonable  and  natural  grounds.  But  while 
Protestantism  was  right  in  its  attempt — for  it  was  only  an 
attempt — to  deny  the  authority  of  Canon  law,  that  attempt  was 
altogether  unsatisfactory  on  the  positive  side.  As  a  matter  of 
fact  marriage  is  not  a  true  contract  and  no  attempt  has  ever  been 
made  to  convert  it  into  a  true  contract. 


Various  writers  have  treated  marriage  as  an  actual  contract  or 
argued  that  it  ought  to  be  converted  into  a  true  contract.  Mrs.  Mona 
Caird,  for  instance  ("The  Morality  of  Marriage,"  Fortnightly  Review, 
1890),  believes  that  when  marriage  becomes  really  a  contract  "a  couple 
would  draw  up  their  agreement,  or  depute  the  task  to  their  friends,  as  is 
now  generally  done  as  regards  marriage  settlements.  They  agree  to  live 
together  on  such  and  such  terms,  making  certain  stipulations  within  the 
limits  of  the  code."  The  State,  she  holds,  should,  however,  demand  an 
interval  of  time  between  notice  of  divorce  and  the  divorce  itself,  if  still 
desired  when  that  interval  has  passed.  Similarly,  in  the  United  States 
Dr.  Shufeldt  ("Needed  Revision  of  the  Laws  of  Marriage  and  Divorce," 
Medico-Legal  Journal,  Dec,  1897)  insists  that  marriage  must  be  entirely 
put  into  the  hands  of  the  legal  profession  and  "made  a  civil  contract, 
explicit  in  detail,  and  defining  terms  of  divorce,  in  the  event  that  a  dis- 
solution of  the  contract  is  subsequently  desired."  He  adds  that 
medical  certificates  of  freedom  from  hereditary  and  acquired  disease 
should  be  required,  and  properly  regulated  probationary  marriages  also 
be  instituted. 


1  The  same  conception  of  marriage  as  a  contract  still  persists  to 
some  extent  also  in  the  United  States,  whither  it  was  carried  by  the  early 
Protestants  and  Puritans.  No  definition  of  marriage  is  indeed  usually 
laid  down  by  the  States,  but,  Howard  says  {op.  cit.,  vol.  ii,  p.  395),  "in 
effect  matrimony  is  treated  as  a  relation  partaking  of  the  nature  of  both 
status  and  contract." 


472  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

In  France,  a  deputy  of  the  Chamber  was,  in  1891,  so  convinced  that 
marriage  is  a  contract,  like  any  other  contract,  that  he  declared  that  "to 
perform  music  at  the  celebration  of  a  marriage  is  as  ridiculous  as  it 
would  be  to  send  for  a  tenor  to  a  notary's  to  celebrate  a  sale  of  timber." 
He  was  of  quite  different  mind  from  Pepys,  who,  a  couple  of  centuries 
earlier,  had  been  equally  indignant  at  the  absence  of  music  from  a  wed- 
ding, which,  he  said,  made  it  like  a  coupling  of  dog  and  bitch. 

A  frequent  demand  of  those  who  insist  that  marriage  must  be 
regarded  as  a  contract  is  marriage  contracted  for  a  term  of  years.  Mar- 
riages could  be  contracted  for  a  term  of  five  years  or  less  in  old  Japan, 
and  it  is  said  that  they  were  rarely  or  never  dissolved  at  the  end  of  the 
term.  Goethe,  in  his  Wahlverwandtscliaften  (Part  I,  Ch.  X)  incidentally 
introduced  a  proposal  for  marriages  for  a  term  of  five  years  and  at- 
tached much  moral  significance  to  the  prolongation  of  the  mar- 
riage beyond  that  term  without  external  compulsion.  (Bloch  considers 
that  Goethe  had  probably  heard  of  the  Japanese  custom,  Sexual  Life  of 
Our  Time,  p.  241.)  Professor  E.  D.  Cope  ("The  Marriage  Problem," 
Open  Court,  Nov.  15  and  22,  1888),  likewise,  in  order  to  remove  matri- 
mony from  the  domain  of  caprice  and  to  permit  full  and  fair  trial, 
advocated  "a  system  of  civil  marriage  contracts  which  shall  run  for  a 
definite  time.  These  contracts  should  be  of  the  same  value  and  effect 
as  the  existing  marriage  contract.  The  time  limits  should  be  increased 
rapidly,  so  as  to  prevent  women  of  mature  years  being  deprived  of  sup- 
port. The  first  contract  ought  not  to  run  for  less  than  five  years,  so 
as  to  give  ample  opportunity  for  acquaintance,  and  for  the  recovery 
from  temporary  disagreements."  This  first  contract,  Cope  held,  should 
be  terminable  at  the  wish  of  either  party;  the  second  contract,  for  ten 
or  fifteen  years,  should  only  be  terminable  at  the  wish  of  both  parties, 
and  the  third  should  be  permanent  and  indissoluble.  George  Meredith, 
the  distinguished  novelist,  also,  more  recently,  threw  out  the  suggestion 
that  marriages  should  be  contracted  for  a  term  of  years. 

It  can  scarcely  be  said  that  marriages  for  a  term  of  years  con- 
stitute a  very  satisfactory  solution  of  the  difficulties  at  present  encoun- 
tered. They  would  not  commend  themselves  to  young  lovers,  who  believe 
that  their  love  is  eternal,  nor,  so  long  as  the  union  proves  satisfactory, 
is  there  any  need  to  introduce  the  disturbing  idea  of  a  legal  termination 
of  the  contract.  On  the  other  hand,  if  the  union  proves  unhappy,  it  is 
not  reasonable  to  insist  on  the  continuation  for  ten  or  even  five  years 
of  an  empty  form  which  corresponds  to  no  real  marriage  union.  Even 
if  marriage  is  placed  on  the  most  prosaic  contractive  basis  it  is  a  mis- 
take, and  indeed  an  impossibility,  to  pre-ordain  the  length  of  its  dura- 
tion. The  system  of  fixing  the  duration  of  marriage  beforehand  for  a 
term  of  years  involves  exactly  the  same  principle  as  the  system  of  fixing 
it  beforehand  for  life.     It  is  open  to  the  same  objection  that  it  is  incom- 


MARRIAGE.  473 

patible  with  any  vital  relationship.  As  the  demand  for  vital  reality 
and  effectiveness  in  social  relationships  grows,  this  fact  is  increasingly 
felt.  We  see  exactly  the  same  change  among  us  in  regard  to  the  system 
of  inflicting  fixed  sentences  of  imprisonment  on  criminals.  To  send  a 
man  to  prison  for  five  years  or  for  life,  without  any  regard  to  the 
unknown  problem  of  the  vital  reaction  of  imprisonment  on  the  man — a 
reaction  which  will  be  different  in  every  individual  case — is  slowly  com 
ing  to  be  regarded  as  an  absurdity. 

If  marriage  were  really  placed  on  the  basis  of  a  contract, 
not  only  would  that  contract  be  voidable  at  the  will  of  the  two 
parties  concerned,  without  any  question  of  delinquency  coming 
into  the  question,  but  those  parties  would  at  the  outset  themselves 
determine  the  conditions  regulating  the  contract.  But  nothing 
could  be  more  unlike  our  actual  marriage.  The  two  parties  are 
bidden  to  accept  each  other  as  husband  and  wife;  they  are  not 
invited  to  make  a  contract;  they  are  not  even  told  that,  little  as 
they  may  know  it,  they  have  in  fact  made  a  very  complicated  and 
elaborate  contract  that  was  framed  on  lines  laid  down,  for  a  large 
part,  thousands  of  years  before  they  were  born.  Unless  they  have 
studied  law  they  are  totally  ignorant,  also,  that  this  contract 
contains  clauses  which  under  some  circumstances  may  be  fatal  to 
either  of  them.  All  that  happens  is  that  a  young  couple,  perhaps 
little  more  than  children,  momentarily  dazed  by  emotion,  are 
hurried  before  the  clergyman  or  the  civil  registrar  of  marriages, 
to  bind  themselves  together  for  life,  knowing  nothing  of  the 
world  and  scarcely  more  of  each  other,  knowing  nothing  also 
of  the  marriage  laws,  not  even  perhaps  so  much  as  that  there 
are  any  marriage  laws,  never  realizing  that — as  has  been  truly 
said — from  the  place  they  are  entering  beneath  a  garland  of 
flowers  there  is,  on  this  side  of  death,  no  exit  except  through 
the  trapdoor  of  a  sewer.1 

When  a  woman  marries  she  gives  up  the  right  to  her  own  person. 
Thus,  according  to  the  law  of  England,  a  man  "cannot  be  guilty  of  a 
rape  upon  his  lawful  wife."     Stephen,  who,  in  the  first  edition  of  his 


1  This  point  of  view  has  been  vigorously  set  forth  by  Paul  and 
Victor  Margueritte,  Quelques  Idees. 


474  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

Digest  of  Criminal  Law,  thought  that  under  some  circumstances  a  man 
might  be  indicted  for  rape  upon  his  wife,  in  the  last  edition  withdrew 
that  opinion.  A  man  may  rape  a  prostitute,  but  he  cannot  rape  his 
wife.  Having  once  given  her  consent  to  sexual  intercourse  by  the  act 
of  marrying  a  man,  she  has  given  it  forever,  whatever  new  circumstances 
may  arise,  and  he  has  no  need  to  ask  her  consent  to  sexual  intercourse, 
not  even  if  he  is  knowingly  suffering  at  the  time  from  a  venereal  disease 
(see,  e.g.,  an  article  on  "Sex  Bias,"  Westminster  Review,  March,  1888). 

The  duty  of  the  wife  to  allow  "conjugal  rights"  to  her  husband  is 
another  aspect  of  her  legal  subjection  to  him.  Even  in  the  nineteenth 
century  a  Suffolk  lady  of  good  family  was  imprisoned  in  Ipswich  Goal 
for  many  years  and  fed  on  bread  and  water,  though  suffering  from  vari- 
ous diseases,  till  she  died,  simply  because  she  continued  to  disregard  the 
decree  requiring  her  to  render  conjugal  rights  to  her  husband.  This 
state  of  things  was  partly  reformed  by  the  Matrimonial  Causes  Bill  of 
1884,  and  that  bill  was  passed,  not  to  protect  women,  but  men,  against 
punishment  for  refusal  to  restore  conjugal  rights.  Undoubtedly,  the 
modern  tendency,  although  it  has  progressed  very  slowly,  is  against 
applying  compulsion  to  either  husband  or  wife  to  yield  "conjugal 
rights;"  and  since  the  Jackson  case  it  is  not  possible  in  England  for 
a  husband  to  use  force  in  attempting  to  compel  his  wife  to  live  with 
him.  This  tendency  is  still  more  marked  in  the  United  States;  thus 
the  Iowa  Supreme  Court,  a  few  years  ago,  decided  that  excessive  demands 
for  coitus  constituted  cruelty  of  a  degree  justifying  divorce  (J.  G. 
Kiernan,  Alienist  and  Neurologist,  Nov.  1906,  p.  466). 

The  slender  tenure  of  the  wife  over  her  person  is  not  confined  to 
the  sexual  sphere,  but  even  extends  to  her  right  to  life.  In  England,  if 
a  wife  kills  her  husband,  it  was  formerly  the  very  serious  offence  of 
"petit  treason,"  and  it  is  still  murder.  But,  if  a  husband  kills  his  wife 
and  is  able  to  plead  her  adultery  and  his  jealousy,  it  is  only  man- 
slaughter. (In  France,  where  jealousy  is  regarded  with  extreme  indul- 
gence, even  a  wife  who  kills  her  husband  is  often  acquitted.) 

It  must  not,  however,  be  supposed  that  all  the  legal  inequalities 
involved  by  marriage  are  in  favor  of  the  husband.  A  large  number  of 
injustices  are  also  inflicted  on  the  husband.  The  husband,  for  instance, 
is  legally  responsible  for  the  libels  uttered  by  his  wife,  and  he  is  equally 
responsible  civilly  for  the  frauds  she  commits,  even  if  she  is  living  apart 
from  him.  (This  was,  for  instance,  held  by  an  English  judge  in  1908; 
"he  could  only  say  he  regretted  it,  for  it  seems  a  hard  case.  But  it 
was  the  law.")  Belfort  Bax  has,  in  recent  years,  especially  insisted  on 
the  hardships  inflicted  by  English  law  in  such  ways  as  these.  There 
can  be  no  doubt  that  marriage,  as  at  present  constituted,  inflicts  serious 
wrongs  on  the  husband  as  well  as  on  the  wife. 


MARRIAGE.  475 

Marriage  is,  therefore,  not  only  not  a  contract  in  the  true 
sense,1  but  in  the  only  sense  in  which  it  is  a  contract  it  is  a  con- 
tract of  an  exceedingly  bad  kind.  When  the  Canonists  super- 
seded the  old  conception  of  marriage  as  a  contract  of  purchase  by 
their  sacramental  marriage,  they  were  in  many  respects  effecting 
a  real  progress,  and  the  return  to  the  idea  of  a  contract,  as  soon 
as  its  temporary  value  as  a  protest  has  ceased,  proves  altogether 
out  of  harmony  with  any  advanced  stage  of  civilization.  It  was 
revived  in  days  before  the  revolt  against  slavery  had  been 
inaugurated.  Personal  contracts  are  out  of  harmony  with  our 
modern  civilization  and  our  ideas  of  individual  liberty.  A  man 
can  no  longer  contract  himself  as  a  slave  nor  sell  his  wife.  Yet 
marriage,  regarded  as  a  contract,  is  of  precisely  the  same  class 
as  those  transactions.2  In  every  high  stage  of  civilization  this 
fact  is  clearly  recognized,  and  young  couples  are  not  even  allowed 
to  contract  themselves  out  in  marriage  unconditionally.  We  see 
this,  for  instance,  in  the  wise  legislation  of  the  Eomans.  Even 
under  the  Christian  Emperors  that  sound  principle  was  main- 
tained and  the  lawyer  Paulus  wrote:3  "Marriage  was  so  free, 
according  to  ancient  opinion,  that  even  agreements  between  the 
parties  not  to  separate  from  one  another  could  have  no  validity/' 
In  so  far  as  the  essence  and  not  any  accidental  circumstance  of 
the  marital  relationships  is  made  a  contract,  it  is  a  contract  of 
a  nature  which  the  two  parties  concerned  are  not  competent  to 
make.  Biologically  and  psychologically  it  cannot  be  valid,  and 
with  the  growth  of  a  humane  civilization  it  is  explicitly  declared 
to  be  legally  invalid. 

For,  there  can  be  no  doubt  ab.out  it,  the  intimate  and  essen- 
tial fact  of  marriage — the  relationship  of  sexual  intercourse — is 


1 1  may  remark  that  this  was  pointed  out,  and  its  consequences 
vigorously  argued,  many  years  ago  by  C.  G.  Garrison,  "Limits  of 
Divorce,"  Contemporary  Review,  Feb.,  1894.  "It  may  safely  be  as- 
serted," he  concludes,  "that  marriage  presents  not  one  attribute  or 
incident  of  anything  remotely  resembling  a  contract,  either  in  form, 
remedy,  procedure,  or  result;  but  that  in  all  these  aspects,  on  the  con- 
trary, it  is  fatally  hostile  to  the  principles  and  practices  of  that  division 
of  the  rights  of  persons."     Marriage  is  not  contract,  but  conduct. 

2  See,  e.g.,  P.  and  V.  Margueritte,  op.  cit. 

3  As  quoted  by  Howard,  op.  cit.,  vol.  ii}  p.  29. 


476  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

not  and  cannot  be  a  contract.  It  is  not  a  contract  but  a  fact ;  it 
cannot  be  effected  by  any  mere  act  of  will  on  the  part  of  the 
parties  concerned;  it  cannot  be  maintained  by  any  mere  act  of 
will.  To  will  such  a  contract  is  merely  to  perform  a  worse  than 
indecorous  farce.  Certainly  many  of  the  circumstances  of  mar- 
riage are  properly  the  subject  of  contract,  to  be  voluntarily  and 
deliberately  made  by  the  parties  to  the  contract.  But  the 
essential  fact  of  marriage — a  love  strong  enough  to  render  the 
most  intimate  of  relationships  possible  and  desirable  through  an 
indefinite  number  of  years — cannot  be  made  a  matter  for  contract. 
Alike  from  the  physical  point  of  view,  and  the  psychical  point  of 
view,  no  binding  contract — and  a  contract  is  worthless  if  it  is 
not  binding — can  possibly  be  made.  And  the  making  of  such 
pseudo-contracts  concerning  the  future  of  a  marriage,  before  it 
has  even  been  ascertained  that  the  marriage  can  ever  become  a 
fact  at  all,  is  not  only  impossible  but  absurd. 

It  is  of  course  true  that  this  impossibility,  this  absurdity,  are 
never  visible  to  the  contracting  parties.  They  have  applied  to 
the  question  all  the  very  restricted  tests  that  are  conventionally 
permitted  to  them,  and  the  satisfactory  results  of  these  tests, 
together  with  the  consciousness  of  possessing  an  immense  and 
apparently  inexhaustible  fund  of  loving  emotion,  seem  to  them 
adequate  to  the  fulfilment  of  the  contract  throughout  life,  if  not 
indeed  eternity. 

As  a  child  of  seven  I  chanced  to  be  in  a  semi-tropical  island 
of  the  Pacific  supplied  with  fruit,  especially  grapes,  from  the 
mainland,  and  a  dusky  market  woman  always  presented  a 
large  bunch  of  grapes  to  the  little  English  stranger.  But  a 
day  came  when  the  proffered  bunch  was  firmly  refused;  the 
superabundance  of  grapes  had  produced  a  reaction  of  disgust. 
A  space  of  nearly  forty  years  was  needed  to  overcome  the  repug- 
nance to  grapes  thus  acquired.  Yet  there  can  be  no  doubt  that 
if  at  the  age  of  six  that  little  boy  had  been  asked  to  sign  a  con- 
tract binding  him  to  accept  grapes  every  day,  to  keep  them  always 
near  him,  to  eat  them  and  to  enjoy  them  every  day,  he  would  have 
signed  that  contract  as  joyously  as  any  radiant  bridgegroom  or 
demure  bride  signs  the  register  in  the  vestry.     But  is  a  complex 


MARRIAGE.  477 

man  or  woman,  with  unknown  capacities  for  changing  or 
deteriorating,  and  with  incalculable  aptitudes  for  inflicting 
torture  and  arousing  loathing,  is  such  a  creature  more  easy  to  be 
bound  to  than  an  exquisite  fruit?  All  the  countries  of  the 
world  in  which  the  subtle  influence  of  the  Canon  law  of 
Christendom  still  makes  itself  felt,  have  not  yet  grasped  a  gen- 
eral truth  which  is  well  within  the  practical  experience  of  a  child 
of  seven.1 

The  notion  that  such  a  relationship  as  that  of  marriage  can  rest 
on  so  fragile  a  basis  as  a  pre-ordained  contract  has  naturally  never  pre- 
vailed widely  in  its  extreme  form,  and  has  been  unknown  altogether  in 
many  parts  of  the  world.  The  Romans,  as  we  know,  explicitly  rejected 
it,  and  even  at  a  comparatively  early  period  recognized  the  legality  of 
marriage  by  usus,  thus  declaring  in  effect  that  marriage  must  be  a  fact, 
and  not  a  mere  undertaking.  There  has  been  a  widespread  legal  ten- 
dency, especially  where  the  traditions  of  Roman  law  have  retained  any 
influence,  to  regard  the  cohabitation  of  marriage  as  the  essential  fact  of 
the  relationship.  It  was  an  old  rule  even  under  the  Catholic  Church 
that  marriage  may  be  presumed  from  cohabitation  (see,  e.g.,  Zacchia, 
Questionum  Medico-legalium  Opus,  edition  of  1688,  vol.  iii,  p.  234).  Even 
in  England  cohabitation  is  already  one  of  the  presumptions  in  favor  of 
the  existence  of  marriage  (though  not  necessarily  by  itself  regarded  as 
sufficient),  provided  the  woman  is  of  unblemished  character,  and  does 
not  appear  to  be  a  common  prostitute  '(Nevill  Geary,  The  Law  of  Mar- 
riage, Ch.  III).  If,  however,  according  to  Lord  Watson's  judicial  state- 
ment in  the  Dysart  Peerage  case,  a  man  takes  his  mistress  to  a  hotel  or 
goes  with  her  to  a  baby-linen  shop  and  speaks  of  her  as  his  wife,  it  is 
to  be  presumed  that  he  is  acting  for  the  sake  of  decency,  and  this  fur- 
nishes no  evidence  of  marriage.  In  Scotland  the  presumption  of  mar- 
riage arises  on  much  slighter  grounds  than  in  England.  This  may  be 
connected  with  the  ancient  and  deep-rooted  custom  in  Scotland  of  mar- 
riage by  exchange  of  consent  (Geary,  op.  cit^  Ch.  XVTII;  cf.,  Howard, 
Matrimonial  Institutions,  vol.  i,  p.  316). 

In  the  Bredalbane  case  (Campbell  v.  Campbell,  1867),  which  was 
of  great  importance  because  it  involved  the  succession  to  the  vast  estates 
of  the  Marquis  of  Bredalbane,  the  House  of  Lords  decided  than  even  an 
adulterous  connection  may,  on  ceasing  to  be  adulterous,  become  matri- 

i  Ellen  Key  similarly  (TJeber  Lieoe  und  Ehe,  p.  343)  remarks  that 
to  talk  of  "the  duty  of  life-long  fidelity"  is  much  the  same  as  to  talk  of 
"the  duty  of  life-long  health."  A  man  may  promise,  she  adds,  to  do 
his  best  to  preserve  his  life,  or  his  love;  he  cannot  unconditionally 
undertake  to  preserve  them. 


478  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

monial  by  the  simple  consent  of  the  parties,  as  evidenced  by  habit  and 
repute,  without  any  need  for  the  matrimonial  character  of  the  connec- 
tion to  be  indicated  by  any  public  act,  nor  any  necessity  to  prove  the 
specific  period  when  the  consent  was  interchanged.  This  decision  has 
been  confirmed  in  the  Dysart  case  (Geary,  loc.  cit.;  cf.  C.  G.  Garrison, 
"Limits  of  Divorce,"  Contemporary  Review,,  Feb.,  1894).  Similarly,  as 
decided  by  Justice  Kekewich  in  the  Wagstaff  case  in  1907,  if  a  man 
leaves  money  to  his  "widow,"  on  condition  that  she  never  marries  again, 
although  he  has  never  been  married  to  her,  and  though  she  has  been 
legally  married  to  another  man,  the  testator's  intentions  must  be 
upheld.  Garrison,  in  his  valuable  discussion  of  this  aspect  of  legal 
marriage  (loo.  cit.),  forcibly  insists  that  by  English  law  marriage  is  a 
fact  and  not  a  contract,  and  that  where  "conduct  characterized  by  con- 
nubial purpose  and  constancy"  exists,  there  marriage  legally  exists,  mar- 
riage being  simply  "a  name  for  an  existing  fact." 

In  the  United  States,  marriage  "by  habit  and  repute"  similarly 
exists,  and  in  some  States  has  even  been  confirmed  and  extended  by 
statute  (J.  P.  Bishop,  Commentaries,  vol.  i,  Ch.  XV).  "Whatever  the 
form  of  the  ceremony,  and  even  if  all  ceremony  was  dispensed  with," 
said  Judge  Cooley,  of  Michigan,  in  1875  (in  an  opinion  accepted  as 
authoritative  by  the  Federal  courts),  "if  the  parties  agreed  presently 
to  take  each  other  for  husband  and  wife,  and  from  that  time  lived 
together  professedly  in  that  relation,  proof  of  these  facts  would  be  suffi- 
cient  This  has  been  the  settled  doctrine  of  the  American 

courts."  (Howard,  op.  cit.,  vol.  iii,  pp.  177  et  seq.  Twenty-three  States 
sanction  common-law  marriage,  while  eighteen  repudiate,  or  are  inclined 
to  repudiate,  any  informal  agreement.) 

This  legal  recognition  by  the  highest  judicial  authorities,  alike  in 
Great  Britain  and  the  United  States,  that  marriage  is  essentially  a  fact, 
and  that  no  evidence  of  any  form  or  ceremony  of  marriage  is  required 
for  the  most  complete  legal  recognition  of  marriage,  undoubtedly  carries 
with  it  highly  important  implications.  It  became  clear  that  the  reform 
of  marriage  is  possible  even  without  change  in  the  law,  and  that  honor- 
able sexual  relationships,  even  when  entered  into  without  any  legal 
forms,  are  already  entitled  to  full  legal  recognition  and  protection. 
There  are,  however,  it  need  scarcely  be  added  here,  other  considerations 
which  render  reform  along  these  lines  incomplete. 

It  thus  tends  to  come  about  that  with  the  growth  of  civiliza- 
tion the  conception  of  marriage  as  a  contract  falls  more  and  more 
into  discredit.  It  is  realized,  on  the  one  hand,  that  personal 
contracts  are  out  of  harmony  with  our  general  and  social  attitude, 
for  if  we  reject  the  idea  of  a  human  being  contracting  himself 


MARRIAGE.  479 

as  a  slave,  how  much  more  we  should  reject  the  idea  of  entering 
by  contract  into  the  still  more  intimate  relationship  of  a  husband 
or  a  wife;  on  the  other  hand  it  is  felt  that  the  idea  of  pre- 
ordained contracts  on  a  matter  over  which  the  individual  himself 
has  no  control  is  quite  unreal  and  when  any  strict  rules  of  equity 
prevail,  necessarily  invalid.  It  is  true  that  we  still  constantly 
find  writers  sententiously  asserting  their  notions  of  the  duties  or 
the  privileges  involved  by  the  "contract"  of  marriage,  with  no 
more  attempt  to  analyze  the  meaning  of  the  term  "contract"  in 
this  connection  than  the  Protestant  Eeformers  made,  but  it  can 
scarcely  be  said  that  these  writers  have  yet  reached  the  alphabet 
of  the  subject  they  dogmatize  about. 

The  transference  of  marriage  from  the  Church  to  the  State 
which,  in  the  lands  where  it  first  occurred,  we  owe  to  Protestant- 
ism and,  in  the  English-speaking  lands,  especially  to  Puritanism, 
while  a  necessary  stage,  had  the  unfortunate  result  of  seculariz- 
ing the  sexual  relationships.  That  is  to  say,  it  ignored  the 
transcendent  element  in  love  which  is  really  the  essential  part  of 
such  relationships,  and  it  concentrated  attention  on  those  formal 
and  accidental  parts  of  marriage  which  can  alone  be  dealt  with 
in  a  rigid  and  precise  manner,  and  can  alone  properly  form  the 
subject  of  contracts.  The  Canon  law,  fantastic  and  impossible 
as  it  became  in  many  of  its  developments,  at  least  insisted  on  the 
natural  and  actual  fact  of  marriage  as,  above  all,  a  bodily  union, 
while,  at  the  same  time,  it  regarded  that  union  as  no  mere  secular 
business  contract  but  a  sacred  and  exalted  function,  a  divine  fact, 
and  the  symbol  of  the  most  divine  fact  in  the  world.  We  are 
returning  to-day  to  the  Canonist's  conception  of  marriage  on  a 
higher  and  freer  plane,  bringing  back  the  exalted  conception  of 
the  Canon  law,  yet  retaining  the  individualism  which  the  Puritan 
wrongly  thought  he  could  secure  on  the  basis  of  mere  seculariza- 
tion, while,  further,  we  recognize  that  the  whole  process  belongs 
to  the  private  sphere  of  moral  responsibility.  As  Hobhouse  has 
well  said,  in  tracing  the  evolutionary  history  of  the  modern  con- 
ception of  marriage,  the  sacramental  idea  of  marriage  has  again 
emerged  but  on  a  higher  plane ;  "from  being  a  sacrament  in  the 
magical,  it  has  become  one  in  the  ethical,  sense."    We  are  thus 


480  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

tending  towards,  though  we  have  not  yet  legally  achieved,  mar- 
riage made  and  maintained  by  consent,  "a  union  between  two  free 
and  responsible  persons  in  which  the  equal  rights  of  both  are 
maintained."1 

It  is  supposed  by  some  that  to  look  upon  sexual  union  as  a  sacra- 
ment is  necessarily  to  accept  the  ancient  Catholic  view,  embodied  in  the 
Canon  law,  that  matrimony  is  indissoluble.  That  is,  however,  a  mistake. 
Even  the  Canonists  themselves  were  never  able  to  put  forward  any 
coherent  and  consistent  ground  for  the  indissolubility  of  matrimony 
which  could  commend  itself  rationally,  while  Luther  and  Milton  and 
Wilhelm  von  Humboldt,  who  maintained  the  religious  and  sacred  nature 
of  sexual  union — though  they  were  cautious  about  using  the  term  sacra- 
ment on  account  of  its  ecclesiastical  implications — so  far  from  believing 
that  its  sanctity  involved  indissolubility,  argued  in  the  reverse  sense. 
This  point  of  view  may  be  defended  even  from  a  strictly  Protestant 
standpoint.  "I  take  it,"  Mr.  G.  C.  Maberly  says,  "that  the  Prayer 
Book  definition  of  a  sacrament,  'the  outward  and  visible  sign  of  an 
inward  and  spiritual  grace,'  is  generally  accepted.  In  marriage  the 
legal  and  physical  unions  are  the  outward  and  visible  signs,  while  the 
inward  and  spiritual  grace  is  the  God-given  love  that  makes  the  union 
of  heart  and  soul:  and  it  is  precisely  because  I  take  this  view  of  mar- 
riage that  I  consider  the  legal  and  physical  union  should  be  dissolved 
whenever  the  spiritual  union  of  unselfish,  divine  love  and  affection  has 
ceased.  It  seems  to  me  that  the  sacramental  view  of  marriage  compels 
us  to  say  that  those  who  continue  the  legal  or  physical  union  when  the 
spiritual  union  has  ceased,  are — to  quote  again  from  the  Prayer  Book 
words  applied  to  those  who  take  the  outward  sign  of  another  sacrament 
when  the  inward  and  spiritual  grace  is  not  present — 'eating  and  drink- 
ing their  own  damnation.' " 

If  from  the  point  we  have  now  reached  we  look  back  at  the 
question  of  divorce  we  see  that,  as  the  modern  aspects  of  the 
marriage  relationship  becomes  more  clearly  realized  by  the  com- 
munity, that  question  will  be  immensely  simplified.  Since  mar- 
riage is  not  a  mere  contract  but  a  fact  of  conduct,  and  even  a 
sacred  fact,  the  free  participation  of  both  parties  is  needed  to 
maintain  it.  To  introduce  the  idea  of  delinquency  and  punish- 
ment into  divorce,  to  foster  mutual  recrimination,  to  publish  to 


iHobhouse,  op.  tit.,  vol.  i,  pp.  159,  237-9;    ef.  P.  and  V.  Mar- 
gueritte,  Quelques  Id6es, 


MARRIAGE.  481 

the  world  the  secrets  of  the  heart  or  the  senses,  is  not  only 
immoral,  it  is  altogether  out  of  place.  In  the  question  as  to  when 
a  marriage  has  ceased  to  be  a  marriage  the  two  parties  concerned 
can  alone  be  the  supreme  judges  •  the  State,  if  the  State  is  called 
in,  can  but  register  the  sentence  they  pronounce,  merely  seeing 
to  it  that  no  injustice  is  involved  in  the  carrying  out  of  that 
sentence.1 

In  discussing  in  the  previous  chapter  the  direction  in  which 
sexual  morality  tends  to  develop  with  the  development  of  civiliza- 
tion we  came  to  the  conclusion  that  in  its  main  lines  it  involved, 
above  all,  personal  responsibility.  A  relationship  fixed  among 
savage  peoples  by  social  custom  which  none  dare  break,  and  in  a 
higher  stage  of  culture  by  formal  laws  which  must  be  observed 
in  the  letter  even  if  broken  in  the  spirit,  becomes  gradually  trans- 
ferred to  the  sphere  of  individual  moral  responsibility.  Such  a 
transference  is  necessarily  meaningless,  and  indeed  impossible, 
unless  the  increasing  stringency  of  the  moral  bond  is  accompanied 
by  the  decreasing  stringency  of  the  formal  bond.  It  is  only  by 
the  process  of  loosening  the  artificial  restraints  that  the  natural 
restraints  can  exert  their  full  control.  That  process  takes  place 
in  two  ways,  in  part  on  the  basis  of  the  indifference  to  formal 
marriage  which  has  marked  the  masses  of  the  population  every- 
where and  doubtless  stretches  back  to  the  tenth  century  before 
the  domination  of  ecclesiastical  matrimony  began,  and  partly  by 
the  progressive  modification  of  marriage  laws  which  were  made 
necessary  by  the  needs  of  the  propertied  classes  anxious  to  secure 
the  State  recognition  of  their  unions.  The  whole  process  is 
necessarily  a  gradual  and  indeed  imperceptible  process.  It  is 
impossible  to  fix  definitely  the  dates  of  the  stages  by  which  the 
Church  effected  the  immense  revolution  by  which  it  grasped,  and 
eventually  transferred  to  the  State,  the  complete  control  of  mar- 
riage, for  that  revolution  was  effected  without  the  intervention  of 
any  law.     It  will  be  equally  difficult  to  perceive  the  transference 

i  "Divorce,"  as  Garrison  puts  it  ("Limits  of  Divorce,"  Contem- 
porary Review,  Feb.,  1894),  "is  the  judicial  announcement  that  conduct 
once  connubial  in  character  and  purpose,  has  lost  these  qualities. 
.  .  .  .  Divorce  is  a  question  of  fact,  and  not  a  license  to  break  a 
promise." 

si 


482  PSYCHOLOGY    OP    SEX. 

of  the  control  of  marriage  from  the  State  to  the  individuals  con- 
cerned, and  the  more  difficult  because,  as  we  shall  see,  although 
the  essential  and  intimately  personal  fact  of  marriage  is  not  a 
proper  matter  for  State  control,  there  are  certain  aspects  of  mar- 
riage which  touch  the  interests  of  the  community  so  closely  that 
the  State  is  bound  to  insist  on  their  registration  and  to  take  an 
interest  in  their  settlement. 

The  result  of  dissolving  the  formal  stringency  of  the  mar- 
riage relationship,  it  is  sometimes  said,  would  be  a  tendency  to  an 
immoral  laxity.  Those  who  make  this  statement  overlook  the 
fact  that  laxity  tends  to  reach  a  maximum  as  a  result  of 
stringency,  and  that  where  the  merely  external  authority  of  a 
rigid  marriage  law  prevails,  there  the  extreme  excesses  of  license 
most  nourish.  It  is  also  undoubtedly  true,  and  for  the  same 
reason,  that  any  sudden  removal  of  restraints  necessarily  involves 
a  reaction  to  the  opposite  extreme  of  license;  a  slave  is  not 
changed  at  a  stroke  into  an  autonomous  freeman.  Yet  we  have 
to  remember  that  the  marriage  order  existed  for  millenniums 
before  any  attempt  was  made  to  mould  it  into  arbitrary  shapes  by 
human  legislation.  Such  legislation,  we  have  seen,  was  indeed 
the  effort  of  the  human  spirit  to  affirm  more  emphatically  the 
demands  of  its  own  instincts.1  But  its  final  result  is  to  choke 
and  impede  rather  than  to  further  the  instincts  which  inspired 
it.  Its  gradual  disappearance  allows  the  natural  order  free  and 
proper  scope. 

The  great  truth  that  compulsion  is  not  really  a  force  on  the  side 
of  virtue,  but  on  the  side  of  vice,  had  been  clearly  realized  by  the  genius 
of  Rabelais,  when  he  said  of  his  ideal  social  state,  the  Abbey  of  Thelema, 
that  there  was  but  one  clause  in  its  rule:  Fay  ce  que  vouldras. 
"Because,"  said  Rabelais  (Bk.  i,  Ch.  VII),  "men  that  are  free,  well- 
born, well-bred,  and  conversant  in  honest  companies,  have  naturally  an 
instinct  and  spur  that  prompts  them  unto  virtuous  actions  and  with- 
draws them  from  vice.  These  same  men,  when  by  base  subjection  and 
constraint  they  are  brought  under  and  kept  down,  turn  aside  from  that 
noble  disposition  by  which  they  freely  were  inclined  to  virtue,  to  shake 
off  and  break  that  bond  of  servitude."  So  that  when  a  man  and  a 
woman  who  had  lived  under  the  rule  of  Thelema  married  each  other, 


i  See,  ante,  p.  425. 


MAREIAGE.  483 

Rabelais  tells  us,  their  mutual  love  lasted  undiminished  to  the  day  of 
their  death. 

When  the  loss  of  autonomous  freedom  fails  to  lead  to  licentious 
rebellion  it  incurs  the  opposite  risk  and  tends  to  become  a  flabby 
reliance  on  an  external  support.  The  artificial  support  of  marriage  by 
State  regulation  then  resembles  the  artificial  support  of  the  body  fur- 
nished by  corset-wearing.  The  reasons  for  and  against  adopting  artifi- 
cial support  are  the  same  in  one  case  as  the  other.  Corsets  really  give 
a  feeling  of  support;  they  really  furnish  without  trouble  a  fairly  satis- 
factory appearance  of  decorum ;  they  are  a  real  protection  against 
various  accidents.  But  the  price  at  which  they  furnish  these  advantages 
is  serious,  and  the  advantages  themselves  only  exist  under  unnatural 
conditions.  The  corset  cramps  the  form  and  the  healthy  development  of 
tbe  organs;  it  enfeebles  the  voluntary  muscular  system;  it  is  incom- 
patible with  perfect  grace  and  beauty;  it  diminishes  the  sum  of  active 
energy.  It  exerts,  in  short,  the  same  kind  of  influence  on  physical 
responsibility  as  formal  marriage  on  moral  responsibility. 

It  is  too  often  forgotten,  and  must  therefore  be  repeated,  that 
married  people  do  not  remain  together  because  of  any  religious  or  legal 
tie;  that  tie  is  merely  the  historical  outcome  of  their  natural  tendency 
to  remain  together,  a  tendency  which  is  itself  far  older  than  history. 
"Love  would  exist  in  the  world  to-day,  just  as  pure  and  just  as  endur- 
ing," says  Shufeldt  (Medico-Legal  Journal,  Dec,  1897),  "had  man  never 
invented  'marriage.'  Truly  affined  mates  would  have  remained  faithful 
to  each  other  as  long  as  life  lasted.  It  is  only  when  men  attempt  to 
improve  upon  nature  that  crime,  disease,  and  unhappiness  step  in." 
"The  abolition  of  marriage  in  the  form  now  practiced,"  wrote  Godwin 
more  than  a  century  ago  (Political  Justice,  second  edition,  1796,  vol. 
i,  p.  248),  "will  be  attended  with  no  evils.  We  are  apt  to  represent  it 
to  ourselves  as  the  harbinger  of  brutal  lust  and  depravity.  But  it 
really  happens  in  this,  as  in  other  cases,  that  the  positive  laws  which 
are  made  to  restrain  our  vices  irritate  and  multiply  them."  And  Pro- 
fessor Lester  Ward,  in  insisting  on  the  strength  of  the  monogamic  senti- 
ment in  modern  society,  tndy  remarks  (International  Journal  of  Ethics, 
Oct.,  1896)  that  the  rebellion  against  rigid  marriage  bonds  "is,  in 
reality,  due  to  the  very  strengthening  of  the  true  bonds  of  conjugal 
affection,  coupled  with  a  rational  and  altogether  proper  determination 
on  the  part  of  individuals  to  accept,  in  so  important  a  matter,  nothing 
less  than  the  genuine  article."  "If  by  a  single  stroke,"  says  Professor 
Woods  Hutchinson  (Contemporary  Review,  Sept.,  1905),  "all  marriage 
ties  now  in  existence  were  struck  off  or  declared  illegal,  eight-tenths  of 
all  couples  would  be  remarried  within  forty  eight  hours,  and  seven- 
tenths  could  not  be  kept  asunder  with  bayonets."  An  experiment  of 
this  kind  on  a  small  scale  was  witnessed  in  1909  in  an  English  village 


484  PSYCHOLOGY    OP    SEX. 

in  Buckinghamshire.  It  was  found  that  the  parish  church  had  never 
been  licensed  for  marriages,  and  that  in  consequence  all  the  people  who 
had  gone  through  the  ceremony  of  marriage  in  that  church  during  the 
previous  half  century  had  never  been  legally  married.  Yet,  so  far  as 
could  be  ascertained,  not  a  single  couple  thus  released  from  the  legal 
compulsion  of  marriage  took  advantage  of  the  freedom  bestowed.  In 
the  face  of  such  a  fact  it  is  obviously  impossible  to  attach  any  moral 
value  to  the  form  of  marriage. 

It  is  certainly  inevitable  that  during  a  period  of  transition 
the  natural  order  is  to  some  extent  disturbed  by  the  persistence, 
even  though  in  a  weakened  form,  of  external  bonds  which  are 
beginning  to  be  consciously  realized  as  inimical  to  the  authorita- 
tive control  of  individual  moral  responsibility.  We  can  clearly 
trace  this  at  the  present  time.  A  sensitive  anxiety  to  escape  from 
external  constraint  induces  an  under-valuation  of  the  significance 
of  personal  constraint  in  the  relationship  of  marriage.  Every- 
one is  probably  familiar  with  cases  in  which  a  couple  will  live 
together  through  long  years  without  entering  the  legal  bond  of 
marriage,  notwithstanding  difficulties  in  their  mutual  relation- 
ship which  would  have  long  since  caused  a  separation  or  a 
divorce  had  they  been  legally  married.  When  the  inherent 
difficulties  of  the  marital  relationship  are  complicated  by  the 
difficulties  due  to  external  constraint,  the  development  of 
individual  moral  responsibility  cuts  two  ways,  and  leads  to 
results  that  are  not  entirely  satisfactory.  This  has  been  seen  in 
the  United  States  of  America  and  attention  has  often  been  called 
to  it  by  thoughtful  American  observers.  It  is,  naturally,  noted 
especially  in  women  because  it  is  in  women  that  the  new  growth 
of  personal  freedom  and  moral  responsibility  has  chiefly  made 
itself  felt.  The  first  stirring  of  these  new  impulses,  especially 
when  associated,  as  it  often  is,  with  inexperience  and  ignorance, 
leads  to  impatience  with  the  natural  order,  to  a  demand  for 
impossible  conditions  of  existence,  and  to  an  inaptitude  not  only 
for  the  arbitrary  bondage  of  law  but  even  for  the  wholesome  and 
necessary  bonds  of  human  social  life.  It  is  always  a  hard  lesson 
for  the  young  and  idealistic  that  in  order  to  command  Nature  we 
must  obey  her;  it  can  only  be  learnt  through  contact  with  life 
and  by  the  attainment  of  full  human  growth. 


MARRIAGE.  485 

Dr.  Felix  Adler  (in  an  address  before  the  Society  of  Ethical  Cul- 
ture of  New  York,  Nov.  17,  1889)  called  attention  to  what  he  regarded 
as  the  most  deep-rooted  cause  of  an  undue  prevalence  of  divorce  in 
America.  "The  false  idea  of  individual  liberty  is  largely  held  in 
America,"  and  when  applied  to  family  life  it  often  leads  to  an 
impatience  with  these  duties  which  the  individual  is  either  born  into 
or  has  voluntarily  accepted.  "I  am  constrained  to  think  that  the 
prevalence  of  divorce  is  to  be  ascribed  in  no  small  degree  to  the  influence 
of  democratic  ideas — that  is,  of  false  democratic  ideas — and  our  hope 
lies  in  advancing  towards  a  higher  and  truer  democracy."  A  more 
recent  American  writer,  this  time  a  woman,  Anna  A.  Rogers  ("Why 
American  Marriages  Fail,"  Atlantic  Monthly,  Sept.,  1907)  speaks  in  the 
same  sense,  though  perhaps  in  too  unqualified  a  manner.  She  states 
that  the  frequency  of  divorce  in  America  is  due  to  three  causes:  (1) 
woman's  failure  to  realize  that  marriage  is  her  work  in  the  world;  (2) 
her  growing  individualism;  (3)  her  lost  art  of  giving,  replaced  by  a 
highly  developed  receptive  faculty.  The  American  woman,  this  writer 
states,  in  discovering  her  own  individuality  has  not  yet  learnt  how  to 
manage  it;  it  is  still  "largely  a  useless,  uneasy  factor,  vouchsafing  her 
very  little  more  peace  than  it  does  those  in  her  immediate  surcharged 
vicinity."  Her  circumstances  tend  to  make  of  her  "a  curious  anomalous 
hybrid;  a  cross  between  a  magnificent,  rather  unmannerly  boy,  and  a 
spoiled,  exacting  demi-mondaine,  who  sincerely  loves  in  this  world  her- 
self alone."  She  has  not  yet  learnt  that  woman's  supreme  work  in  the 
world  can  only  be  attained  through  the  voluntary  acceptance  of  the 
restraints  of  marriage.  The  same  writer  points  out  that  the  fault  is  not 
alone  with  American  women,  but  also  with  American  men.  Their 
idolatry  of  their  women  is  largely  responsible  for  that  intolerance  and 
selfishness  which  causes  so  many  divorces;  "American  women  are,  as  a 
whole,  pampered  and  worshipped  out  of  all  reason."  But  the  men,  who 
lend  themselves  to  this,  do  not  feel  that  they  can  treat  their  wives  with 
the  same  comradeship  as  the  French  treat  their  wives,  nor  seek  their 
advice  with  the  same  reliance;  the  American  woman  is  placed  on  an 
unreal  pedestal.  Yet  another  American  writer,  Hafford  Pyke  ("Hus- 
bands and  Wives,"  Cosmopolitan,  1902),  points  out  that  only  a  small 
proportion  of  American  marriages  are  really  unhappy,  these  being  chiefly 
among  the  more  cultured  classes,  in  which  the  movement  of  expansion 
in  women's  interests  and  lives  is  taking  place ;  it  is  more  often  the  wife 
than  the  husband  who  is  disappointed  in  marriage,  and  this  is  largely 
due  to  her  inability  to  merge,  not  necessarily  subordinate,  her  individ- 
uality in  an  equal  union  with  his.  "Marriage  to-day  is  becoming  more 
and  more  dependent  for  its  success  upon  the  adjustment  of  conditions 
that  are  psychical.  Whereas  in  former  generations  it  was  sufficient 
that  the  union  should  involve  physical  reciprocity,  in  this  age  of  ours 


486  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

the  union  must  involve  a  psychic  reciprocity  as  well.  And  whereas, 
heretofore,  the  community  of  interest  was  attained  with  ease,  it  is  now 
becoming  far  more  difficult  because  of  the  tendency  to  discourage  a 
woman  who  marries  from  merging  her  separate  individuality  in  her 
husband's.  Yet,  unless  she  does  this,  how  can  she  have  a  complete  and 
perfect  interest  in  the  life  together,  and,  for  that  matter,  how  can  he 
have  such  an  interest  either?" 

Professor  Miinsterberg,  the  distinguished  psychologist,  in  his  frank 
but  appreciative  study  of  American  institutions,  The  Americans,  taking 
a  broader  outlook,  points  out  that  the  influence  of  women  on  morals  in 
America  has  not  been  in  every  respect  satisfactory,  in  so  far  as  it  has 
tended  to  encourage  shallowness  and  superficiality.  "The  American 
woman  who  has  scarcely  a  shred  of  education,"  he  remarks  (p.  5.87), 
"looks  in  vain  for  any  subject  on  which  she  has  not  firm  convictions 

already  at  hand The  arrogance  of  this  feminine  lack   of 

knowledge  is  the  symptom  of  a  profound  trait  in  the  feminine  soul,  and 
points   to   dangers   springing   from   the    domination    of   women   in   the 

intellectual  life And  in  no  other  civilized  land  are  ethical 

conceptions  so  worm-eaten  by  superstitions." 

We  have  seen  that  the  modern  tendency  as  regards  marriage 
is  towards  its  recognition  as  a  voluntary  union  entered  into  by 
two  free,  equal,  and  morally  responsible  persons,  and  that  that 
union  is  rather  of  the  nature  of  an  ethical  sacrament  than  of  a 
contract,  so  that  in  its  essence  as  a  physical  and  spiritual  bond 
it  is  outside  the  sphere  of  the  State's  action.  It  has  been  neces- 
sary to  labor  that  point  before  we  approach  what  may  seem  to 
many  not  only  a  different  but  even  a  totally  opposed  aspect  of 
marriage.  If  the  marriage  union  itself  cannot  be  a  matter  for 
contract,  it  naturally  leads  to  a  fact  which  must  necessarily  be 
a  matter  for  implicit  or  explicit  contract,  a  matter,  moreover,  in 
which  the  community  at  large  has  a  real  and  proper  interest: 
that  is  the  fact  of  procreation.1 

The  ancient  Egyptians — among  whom  matrimonial  institu- 
tions were  so  elastic  and  the  position  of  woman  so  high — recog- 
nized a  provisional  and  slight  marriage  bond  for  the  purpose  of 


1  It  has  been  necessary  to  discuss  reproduction  in  the  first  chapter 
of  the  present  volume,  and  it  will  again  be  necessary  in  the  concluding 
chapter.  Here  we  are  only  concerned  with  procreation  as  an  element 
of  marriage. 


MARRIAGE.  487 

testing  fecundity.1  Among  ourselves  the  law  makes  no  such 
paternal  provision,  leaving  to  young  couples  themselves  the 
responsibility  of  making  any  tests,  a  permission,  we  know,  they 
largely  avail  themselves  of,  usually  entering  the  legal  bonds  of 
marriage,  however,  before  the  birth  of  their  child.  That  legal 
bond  is  a  recognition  that  the  introduction  of  a  new  individual 
into  the  community  is  not,  like  sexual  union,  a  mere  personal  fact, 
but  a  social  fact,  a  fact  in  which  the  State  cannot  fail  to  be 
concerned.  And  the  more  we  investigate  the  tendency  of  the 
modern  marriage  movement  the  more  we  shall  realize  that  its 
attitude  of  freedom,  of  individual  moral  responsibility,  in  the 
formation  of  sexual  relationships,  is  compensated  by  an  attitude  of 
stringency,  of  strict  social  oversight,  in  the  matter  of  procreation. 
Two  people  who  form  an  erotic  relationship  are  bound,  when 
they  reach  the  conviction  that  their  relationship  is  a  real  mar- 
riage, having  its  natural  end  in  procreation,  to  subscribe  to  a  con- 
tract which,  though  it  may  leave  themselves  personally  free,  must 
yet  bind  them  both  to  their  duties  towards  their  children.2 

The  necessity  for  such  an  undertaking  is  double,  even  apart 
from  the  fact  that  it  is  in  the  highest  interests  of  the  parents 
themselves.  It  is  required  in  the  interests  of  the  child.  It 
is  required  in  the  interests  of  the  State.  A  child  can  be  bred, 
and  well-bred,  by  one  effective  parent.  But  to  equip  a  child 
adequately  for  its  entrance  into  life  both  parents  are  usually 
needed.  The  State  on  its  side — that  is  to  say,  the  community  of 
which  parents  and  child  alike  form  part — is  bound  to  know  who 
these  persons  are  who  have  become  sponsors  for  a  new  individual 


1  -Nietzold,  Die  Ehe  in  Mgypten  zur  Ptolemaisch-rdmischen  Zeit, 
1903,  p.  3.  This  bond  also  accorded  rights  to  any  children  that  might  be 
born  during  its  existence. 

2  See,  e.g.,  Ellen  Key,  Mutter  und  Kind,  p.  21.  The  necessity  for 
the  combination  of  greater  freedom  of  sexual  relationships  with  greater 
stringency  of  parental  relationships  was  clearly  realized  at  an  earlier 
period  by  another  able  woman  writer,  Miss  J.  H.  Clapperton,  in  her 
notable  book,  Scientific  Meliorism,  published  in  1885.  "Legal  changes," 
she  wrote  (p.  320),  "are  required  in  two  directions,  viz.,  towards  greater 
freedom  as  to  marriage  and  greater  strictness  as  to  parentage.  The 
marriage  union  is  essentially  a  private  matter  with  which  society  has 
no  call  and  no  right  to  interfere.  Childbirth,  on  the  contrary,  is  a  pub- 
lic event.     It  touches  the  interests  of  the  whole  nation." 


488  PSYCHOLOGY    OE    SEX. 

now  introduced  into  its  midst.  The  most  Individualistic  State, 
the  most  Socialistic  State,  are  alike  bound,  if  faithful  to  the 
interests,  both  biological  and  economic,  of  their  constituent 
members  generally,  to  insist  on  the  full  legal  and  recognized 
parentage  of  the  father  and  mother  of  every  child.  That  is 
clearly  demanded  in  the  interests  of  the  child;  it  is  clearly 
demanded  also  in  the  interests  of  the  State. 

The  barrier  which  in  Christendom  has  opposed  itself  to  the 
natural  recognition  of  this  fact,  so  injuring  alike  the  child  and 
the  State,  has  clearly  been  the  rigidity  of  the  marriage  system, 
more  especially  as  moulded  by  the  Canon  law.  The  Canonists 
attributed  a  truly  immense  importance  to  the  copula  carnalis, 
as  they  technically  termed  it.  They  centred  marriage  strictly 
in  the  vagina;  they  were  not  greatly  concerned  about  either  the 
presence  or  the  absence  of  the  child.  The  vagina,  as  we  know,  has 
not  always  proved  a  very  firm  centre  for  the  support  of  marriage, 
and  that  centre  is  now  being  gradually  transferred  to  the  child. 
If  we  turn  from  the  Canonists  to  the  writings  of  a  modern  like 
Ellen  Key,  who  so  accurately  represents  much  that  is  most 
characteristic  and  essential  in  the  late  tendencies  of  marriage 
development,  we  seem  to  have  entered  a  new  world,  even  a  newly 
illuminated  world.  For  "in  the  new  sexual  morality,  as  in  Cor- 
regio's  Notte,  the  light  emanates  from  the  child."1 

No  doubt  this  change  is  largely  a  matter  of  sentiment,  of, 
as  we  sometimes  say,  mere  sentiment,  although  there  is  nothing 
so  powerful  in  human  affairs  as  sentiment,  and  the  revolution 
effected  by  Jesus,  the  later  revolution  effected  by  Eousseau,  were 
mainly  revolutions  in  sentiment.  But  the  change  is  also  a  matter 
of  the  growing  recognition  of  interests  and  rights,  and  as  such  it 
manifests  itself  in  law.  We  can  scarcely  doubt  that  we  are 
approaching  a  time  when  it  will  be  generally  understood  that 
the  entrance  into  the  world  of  every  child,  without  exception, 
should  be  preceded  by  the  formation  of  a  marriage  contract  which, 
while  in  no  way  binding  the  father  and  mother  to  any  duties,  or 
any  privileges,  towards  each  other,  binds  them  both  towards 

i  Ellen  Key,  Liebe  und  Ehe,  p.  168;  cf.  the  same  author's  Century 
of  the  Child. 


MARRIAGE.  489 

their  child  and  at  the  same  time  ensures  their  responsibility 
towards  the  State.  It  is  impossible  for  the  State  to  obtain  more 
than  this,  but  it  should  be  impossible  for  it  to  demand  less. 
A  contract  of  such  a  kind  "marries"  the  father  and  mother  so 
far  as  the  parentage  of  the  individual  child  is  concerned,  and 
in  no  other  respect;  it  is  a  contract  which  leaves  entirely 
unaffected  their  past,  present,  or  future  relations  towards  other 
persons,  otherwise  it  would  be  impossible  to  enforce  it.  In  all 
parts  of  the  world  this  elementary  demand  of  social  morality  is 
slowly  beginning  to  be  recognized,  and  as  it  affects  hundreds  of 
thousands  of  infants1  who  are  yearly  branded  as  "illegitimate" 
through  no  act  of  their  own,  no  one  can  say  that  the  recognition 
has  come  too  soon.  As  yet,  indeed,  it  seems  nowhere  to  be 
complete. 

Most  attempts  or  proposals  for  the  avoidance  of  illegitimate  births 
are  concerned  with  the  legalizing  of  unions  of  a  less  binding  degree  than 
the  present  legal  marriage.  Such  unions  would  serve  to  counteract  other 
evils.  Thus  an  English  writer,  who  has  devoted  much  study  to  sex 
questions,  writes  in  a  private  letter:  "The  best  remedy  for  the  licen- 
tiousness of  celibate  men  and  the  mental  and  physical  troubles  of 
continence  in  woman  would  be  found  in  a  recognized  honorable  system 
of  free  unions  and  trial-marriages,  in  which  preventive  intercourse  is 
practiced  until  the  lovers  were  old  enough  to  become  parents,  and  pos- 
sessed of  sufficient  means  to  support  a  family.  The  prospect  of  a 
loveless  existence  for  young  men  and  women  of  ardent  natures  is  intol- 
erable and  as  terrible  as  the  prospect  of  painful  illness  and  death.  But 
I  think  the  old  order  must  change  ere  long." 

In  Teutonic  countries  there  is  a  strongly  marked  current  of  feeling 
in  the  direction  of  establishing  legal  unions  of  a  lower  degree  than 
marriage.  They  exist  in  Sweden,  as  also  in  Norway  where  by  a  recent 
law  the  illegitimate  child  is  entitled  to  the  same  rights  in  relation  to 
both  parents  as  the  legitimate  child,  bearing  the  father's  name  and 
inheriting  his  property  {Die  Neue  Generation,  July,  1909,  p.  303).  In 
France  the  well-known  judge,  Magnard,  so  honorably  distinguished  for 
his  attitude  towards  cases  of  infanticide  by  young  mothers,  has  said:  "I 
heartily  wish  that  alongside  the  institution  of  marriage  as  it  now  exists 

1  In  Germany  alone  180.000  "illegitimate"  children  are  born  every 
year,  and  the  number  is  rapidly  increasing;  in  England  it  is  only  40,000 
per  annum,  the  strong  feeling  which  often  exists  against  such  births  in 
England  (as  also  in  France)  leading  to  the  wide  adoption  of  methods 
for  preventing  conception. 


490  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

we  had  a  free  union  constituted  by  simple  declaration  before  a  magistrate 
and  conferring  almost  the  same  family  rights  as  ordinary  marriage." 
This  wish  has  been  widely  echoed. 

In  China,  although  polygamy  in  the  strict  sense  cannot  properly 
be  said  to  exist,  the  interests  of  the  child,  the  woman,  and  the  State  are 
alike  safeguarded  by  enabling  a  man  to  enter  into  a  kind  of  secondary 
marriage  with  the  mother  of  his  child.  "Thanks  to  this  system,"  Paul 
d'Enjoy  states  {La  Revue,  Sept.,  1905),  "which  allows  the  husband  to 
marry  the  woman  he  desires,  without  being  prevented  by  previous  and 
undissolved  unions,  it  is  only  right  to  remark  that  there  are  no  seduced 
and  abandoned  girls,  except  such  as  no  law  could  save  from  what  is 
really  innate  depravity;  and  that  there  are  no  illegitimate  children 
except  those  whose  mothers  are  unhappily  nearer  to  animals  by  their 
senses  than  to  human  beings  by  their  reason  and  dignity." 

The  new  civil  code  of  Japan,  which  is  in  many  respects  so  advanced, 
allows  an  illegitimate  child  to  be  "recognized"  by  giving  notice  to  the 
registrar;  when  a  married  man  so  recognizes  a  child,  it  appears,  the 
child  may  be  adopted  by  the  wife  as  her  own,  though  not  actually  ren- 
dered legitimate.  This  state  of  things  represents  a  transition  stage;  it 
can  scarcely  be  said  to  recognize  the  rights  of  the  "recognized"  child's 
mother.  Japan,  it  may  be  added,  has  adopted  the  principle  of  the  auto- 
matic legitimation  by  marriage  of  the  children  born  to  the  couple  before 
marriage. 

In  Australia,  where  women  possess  a  larger  share  than  elsewhere 
in  making  and  administering  the  laws,  some  attention  is  beginning  to  be 
given  to  the  rights  of  illegitimate  children.  Thus  in  South  Australia, 
paternity  may  be  proved  before  birth,  and  the  father  (by  magistrate's 
order)  provides  lodging  for  one  month  before  and  after  birth,  as  well  as 
nurse,  doctor,  and  clothing,  furnishing  security  that  he  will  do  so ;  after 
birth,  at  the  magistrate's  decision,  he  pays  a  weekly  sum  for  the  child's 
maintenance.  An  "illegitimate"  mother  may  also  be  kept  in  a  public 
institution  at  the  public  expense  for  six  months  to  enable  her  to  become 
attached  to  her  child. 

Such  provisions  are  developed  from  the  widely  recognized  right  of 
the  unmarried  woman  to  claim  support  for  her  child  from  its  father. 
In  France,  indeed,  and  in  the  legal  codes  which  follow  the  French 
example,  it  is  not  legally  permitted  to  inquire  into  the  paternity  of  an 
illegitimate  child.  Such  a  law  is,  needless  to  say,  alike  unjust  to  the 
mother,  to  the  child,  and  to  the  State.  In  Austria,  the  law  goes  to  the 
opposite,  though  certainly  more  reasonable,  extreme,  and  permits  even 
the  mother  who  has  had  several  lovers  to  select  for  herself  which  she 
chooses  to  make  responsible  for  her  child.  The  German  code  adopts  an 
intermediate  course,  and  comes  only  to  the  aid  of  the  unmarried  mother 
who   has   one   lover.    In   all   such   cases,    however,    the   aid   given   is 


MARRIAGE.  491 

pecuniary  only;  it  insures  the  mother  no  recognition  or  respect,  and  (as 
Wahrmund  has  truly  said  in  his  Ehe  und  Eherecht)  it  is  still  necessary 
to  insist  on  "the  unconditional  sanctity  of  motherhood,  which  is  entitled, 
under  whatever  circumstances  it  arises,  to  the  respect  and  protection 
of  society." 

It  must  be  added  that,  from  the  social  point  of  view,  it  is  not  the 
sexual  union  which  requires  legal  recognition,  but  the  child  which  is  the 
product  of  that  union.  It  would,  moreover,  be  hopeless  to  attempt  to 
legalize  all  sexual  connection,  but  it  is  comparatively  easy  to  legalize  all 
children. 

There  has  been  much  discussion  in  the  past  concerning  the 
particular  form  which  marriage  ought  to  take.  Many  theorists 
have  exercised  their  ingenuity  in  inventing  and  preaching  new 
and  unusual  marriage-arrangements  as  panaceas  for  social  ills; 
while  others  have  exerted  even  greater  energy  in  denouncing  all 
such  proposals  as  subversive  of  the  foundations  of  human  society. 
We  may  regard  all  such  discussions,  on  the  one  side  or  the 
other,  as  idle. 

In  the  first  place  marriage  customs  are  far  too  fundamental, 
far  too  intimately  blended  with  the  primary  substance  of  human 
and  indeed  animal  society,  to  be  in  the  slightest  degree  shaken  by 
the  theories  or  the  practices  of  mere  individuals,  or  even  groups 
of  individuals.  Monogamy — the  more  or  less  prolonged  cohabita- 
tion of  two  individuals  of  opposite  sex — has  been  the  prevailing 
type  of  sexual  relationship  among  the  higher  vertebrates  and 
through  the  greater  part  of  human  history.  This  is  admitted 
even  by  those  who  believe  (without  any  sound  evidence)  that  man 
has  passed  through  a  stage  of  sexual  promiscuity.  There  have 
been  tendencies  to  variation  in  one  direction  or  another,  but  at 
the  lowest  stages  and  the  highest  stages,  so  far  as  can  be  seen, 
monogamy  represents  the  prevailing  rule. 

It  must  be  said  also,  in  the  second  place,  that  the  natural 
prevalence  of  monogamy  as  the  normal  type  of  sexual  relation- 
ship by  no  means  excludes  variations.  Indeed  it  assumes  them. 
"There  is  nothing  precise  in  Nature,"  according  to  Diderot's 
saying.  The  line  of  Nature  is  a  curve  that  oscillates  from  side 
to  side  of  the  norm.  Such  oscillations  inevitably  occur  in 
harmony  with  changes  in  environmental  conditions,  and,   no 


492  PSYCHOLOGY    OP    SEX. 

doubt,  with  peculiarities  of  personal  disposition.  So  iong  as  no 
arbitrary  and  merely  external  attempt  is  made  to  force  Nature, 
the  vital  order  is  harmoniously  maintained.  Among  certain 
species  of  ducks  when  males  are  in  excess  polyandric  families  are 
constituted,  the  two  males  attending  their  female  partner  without 
jealousy,  but  when  the  sexes  again  become  equal  in  number  the 
monogamie  order  is  restored.  The  natural  human  deviations 
from  the  monogamie  order  seem  to  be  generally  of  this  character, 
and  largely  conditioned  by  the  social  and  economic  environment. 
The  most  common  variation,  and  that  which  most  clearly  pos- 
sesses a  biological  foundation,  is  the  tendency  to  polygyny,  which 
is  found  at  all  stages  of  culture,  even,  in  an  unrecognized  and 
more  or  less  promiscuous  shape,  in  the  highest  civilization.1  It 
must  be  remembered,  however,  that  recognized  polygyny  is  not 
the  rule  even  where  it  prevails ;  it  is  merely  permissive ;  there  is 
never  a  sufficient  excess  of  women  to  allow  more  than  a  few  of 
the  richer  and  more  influential  persons  to  have  more  than  one 
wife.2 

It  has  further  to  be  borne  in  mind  that  a  certain  elasticity 
of  the  formal  side  of  marriage  while,  on  the  one  side,  it  permits 
variations  from  the  general  monogamie  order,  where  such  are 
healthful  or  needed  to  restore  a  balance  in  natural  conditions, 
on  the  other  hand  restrains  such  variations  in  so  far  as  they  are 
due  to  the  disturbing  influence  of  artificial  constraint.  Much  of 
the  polygyny,  and  polyandry  also,  which  prevails  among  us  to- 
day is  an  altogether  artificial  and  unnatural  form  of  polygamy. 
Marriages  which  on  a  more  natural  basis  would  be  dissolved  can- 
not legally  be  dissolved,  and  consequently  the  parties  to  them, 


i  "Where  are  real  monogamists  to  be  found?"  asked  Schopenhauer 
in  his  essay,  "Ueber  die  Weibe."  And  James  Hinton  was  wont  to  ask: 
"What  is  the  meaning  of  maintaining  monogamy?  Is  there  any 
chance  of  getting  it,  I  should  like  to  know?  Do  you  call  English  life 
monogamous  ?" 

2  "Almost  everywhere,"  says  Westermarck  of  polygyny  ( which  he 
discusses  fully  in  Chs.  XX-XXII  of  his  History  of  Human  Marriage) 
"it  is  confined  to  the  smaller  part  of  the  people,  the  vast  majority  being 
monogamous."  Maurice  Gregory  (Contemporary  Review,  Sept.,  1906) 
gives  statistics  showing  that  nearly  everywhere  the  tendency  is  towards 
equality  in  number  of  the  sexes. 


MARRIAGE.  493 

instead  of  changing  their  partners  and  so  preserving  the  natural 
monogamic  order,  take  on  other  additional  partners  and  so  intro- 
duce an  unnatural  polygamy.  There  will  always  be  variations 
from  the  monogamic  order  and  civilization  is  certainly  not  hostile 
to  sexual  variation.  Whether  we  reckon  these  variations  as 
legitimate  or  illegitimate,  they  will  still  take  place;  of  that  we 
may  be  certain.  The  path  of  social  wisdom  seems  to  lie  on  the 
one  hand  in  making  the  marriage  relationship  flexible  enough  to 
reduce  to  a  minimum  these  deviations — not  because  such  devia- 
tions are  intrinsically  bad  but  because  they  ought  not  to  be  forced 
into  existence — and  on  the  other  hand  in  according  to  these 
deviations  when  they  occur  such  a  measure  of  recognition  as  will 
deprive  them  of  injurious  influence  and  enable  justice  to  be  done 
to  all  the  parties  concerned.  We  too  often  forget  that  our  failure 
to  recognize  such  variations  merely  means  that  we  accord  in  such 
cases  an  illegitimate  permission  to  perpetrate  injustice.  In 
those  parts  of  the  world  in  which  polygyny  is  recognized  as  a 
permissible  variation  a  man  is  legally  held  to  his  natural 
obligations  towards  all  his  sexual  mates  and  towards  the  children 
he  has  by  those  mates.  In  no  part  of  the  world  is  polygyny 
so  prevalent  as  in  Christendom;  in  no  part  of  the  world 
is  it  so  easy  for  a  man  to  escape  the  obligations  incurred  by 
polygyny.  We  imagine  that  if  we  refuse  to  recognize  the  fact 
of  polygyny,  we  may  refuse  to  recognize  any  obligations  incurred 
by  polygyny.  By  enabling  a  man  to  escape  so  easily  from  the 
obligations  of  his  polygamous  relationships  we  encourage  him,  if 
he  is  unscrupulous,  to  enter  into  them ;  we  place  a  premium  on 
the  immorality  we  loftily  condemn.1  Our  polygyny  has  no  legal 
existence,  and  therefore  its  obligations  can  have  no  legal  existence. 

i  In  a  polygamous  land  a  man  is  of  course  as  much  bound  by  his 
obligations  to  his  second  wife  as  to  his  first.  Among  ourselves  the  man's 
"second  wife"  is  degraded  with  the  name  of  "mistress,"  and  the  worse 
he  treats  her  and  her  children  the  more  his  "morality"  is  approved,  just 
as  the  Catholic  Church,  when  struggling  to  establish  sacerdotal  celibacy, 
approved  more  highly  the  priest  who  had  illegitimate  relations  with 
women  than  the  priest  who  decently  and  openly  married.  If  his  neglect 
induces  a  married  man's  mistress  to  make  known  her  relationship  to 
him  the  man  is  justified  in  prosecuting  her,  and  his  counsel,  assured  of 
general  sympathy,  will  state  in  court  that  "this  woman  has  even  been 
so  wicked  as  to  write  to  the  prosecutor's  wife!" 


494  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

The  ostrich,  it  was  once  imagined,  hides  its  head  in  the  sand  and 
attempts  to  annihilate  facts  by  refusing  to  look  at  them;  but 
there  is  only  one  known  animal  which  adopts  this  course  of  action, 
and  it  is  called  Man. 

Monogamy,  in  the  fundamental  biological  sense,  represents 
the  natural  order  into  which  the  majority  of  sexual  facts  will 
always  naturally  fall  because  it  is  the  relationship  which  most 
adequately  corresponds  to  all  the  physical  and  spiritual  facts 
involved.  But  if  we  realize  that  sexual  relationships  primarily 
concern  only  the  persons  who  enter  into  those  relationships,  and 
if  we  further  realize  that  the  interest  of  society  in  such  relation- 
ships is  confined  to  the  children  which  they  produce,  we  shall 
also  realize  that  to  fix  by  law  the  number  of  women  with  whom  a 
man  shall  have  sexual  relationships,  and  the  number  of  men 
with  whom  a  woman  shall  unite  herself,  is  more  unreasonable 
than  it  would  be  to  fix  by  law  the  number  of  children  they  shall 
produce.  The  State  has  a  right  to  declare  whether  it  needs  few 
citizens  or  many;  but  in  attempting  to  regulate  the  sexual  rela- 
tionships of  its  members  the  State  attempts  an  impossible  task 
and  is  at  the  same  time  guilty  of  an  impertinence. 

There  is  always  a  tendency,  at  certain  stages  of  civilization,  to 
insist  on  a  merely  formal  and  external  uniformity,  and  a  corresponding 
failure  to  see  not  only  that  such  uniformity  is  unreal,  but  also  that  it 
has  an  injurious  effect,  in  so  far  as  it  checks  beneficial  variations.  The 
tendency  is  by  no  means  confined  to  the  sexual  sphere.  In  England 
there  is,  for  instance,  a  tendency  to  make  building  laws  which  enjoin, 
in  regard  to  places  of  human  habitation,  all  sorts  of  provisions  that  on 
the  whole  are  fairly  beneficial,  but  which  in  practice  act  injuriously, 
because  they  render  many  simple  and  excellent  human  habitations 
absolutely  illegal,  merely  because  such  habitations  fail  to  conform  to 
regulations  which,  under  some  circumstances,  are  not  only  unnecessary, 
but  mischievous. 

Variation  is  a  fact  that  will  exist  whether  we  will  or  no;  it  can 
only  become  healthful  if  we  recognize  and  allow  for  it.  We  may  even 
have  to  recognize  that  it  is  a  more  marked  tendency  in  civilization  than 
in  more  primitive  social  stages.  Thus  Gerson  argues  (Sexual-Probleme, 
Sept.,  1908,  p.  538)  that  just  as  the  civilized  man  cannot  be  content 
with  the  coarse  and  monotonous  food  which  satisfies  the  peasant,  so  it 
is  in  sexual  matters;    the  peasant  youth  and  girl  in  their  sexual  rela- 


MARRIAGE.  495 

tionships  are  nearly  always  monogamous,  but  civilized  people,  with  their 
more  versatile  and  sensitive  tastes,  are  apt  to  crave  for  variety.  Senan- 
cour  (De  V 'Amour,  vol.  ii,  "Du  Partage,"  p.  127)  seems  to  admit  the 
possibility  of  marriage  variations,  as  of  sharing  a  wife,  provided  noth- 
ing is  done  to  cause  rivalry,  or  to  impair  the  soul's  candor.  Lecky,  near 
the  end  of  his  History  of  European  Morals,  declared  his  belief  that, 
while  the  permanent  union  of  two  persons  is  the  normal  and  prevailing 
type  of  marriage,  it  by  no  means  follows  that,  in  the  interests  of 
society,  it  should  be  the  only  form.  Remy  de  Gourmont  similarly 
{Physique  de  V Amour,  p.  186),  while  stating  that  the  couple  is  the 
natural  form  of  marriage  and  its  prolonged  continuance  a  condition  of 
human  superiority,  adds  that  the  permanence  of  the  union  can  only  be 
achieved  with  difficulty.  So,  also,  Professor  W.  Thomas  (Sex  and 
Society,  1907,  p.  193),  while  regarding  monogamy  as  subserving  social 
needs,  adds:  "Speaking  from  the  biological  standpoint  monogamy  does 
not,  as  a  rule,  answer  to  the  conditions  of  highest  stimulation,  since  here 
the  problematical  and  elusive  elements  disappear  to  some  extent,  and 
the  object  of  attention  has  grown  so  familiar  in  consciousness  that  the 
emotional  reactions  are  qualified.  This  is  the  fundamental  explanation 
of  the  fact  that  married  men  and  women  frequently  become  interested 
in  others  than  their  partners  in  matrimony." 

Pepys,  whose  unconscious  self-dissection  admirably  illustrates  so 
many  psychological  tendencies,  clearly  shows  how — by  a  logic  of  feeling 
deeper  than  any  intellectual  logic — the  devotion  to  monogamy  subsists 
side  by  side  with  an  irresistible  passion  for  sexual  variety.  With  his 
constantly  recurring  wayward  attraction  to  a  long  series  of  women  he 
retains  throughout  a  deep  and  unchanging  affection  for  his  charming 
young  wife.  In  the  privacy  of  his  Diary  he  frequently  refers  to  her  in 
terms  of  endearment  which  cannot  be  feigned;  he  enjoys  her  society;  he 
is  very  particular  about  her  dress;  he  delights  in  her  progress  in  music, 
and  spends  much  money  on  her  training;  he  is  absurdly  jealous  when 
he  finds  her  in  the  society  of  a  man.  His  subsidiary  relationships  with 
other  women  recur  irresistibly,  but  he  has  no  wish  either  to  make  them 
very  permanent  or  to  allow  them  to  engross  him  unduly.  Pepys  repre- 
sents a  common  type  of  civilized  "monogamist"  who  is  perfectly  sincere 
and  extremely  convinced  in  his  advocacy  of  monogamy,  as  he  under- 
stands it,  but  at  the  same  time  believes  and  acts  on  the  belief  that 
monogamy  by  no  means  excludes  the  need  for  sexual  variation.  Lord 
Morley's  statement  (Diderot,  vol.  ii,  p.  20)  that  "man  is  instinctively 
polygamous,"  can  by  no  means  be  accepted,  but  if  we  interpret  it  as 
meaning  that  man  is  an  instinctively  monogamous  animal  with  a  con- 
comitant desire  for  sexual  variation,  there  is  much  evidence  in  its  favor. 

Women  must  be  as  free  as  men  to  mould  their  own  amatory  life. 
Many  consider,  however,  that  such  freedom  on  the  part  of  women  will 


496  PSYCHOLOGY    OP    SES. 

be,  and  ought  to  be,  exercised  within  narrower  limits  (see,  e.g.,  Bloch, 
Sexual  Life  of  Our  Time,  Ch.  X ) .  In  part  this  limitation  is  considered 
due  to  the  greater  absorption  of  a  woman  in  the  task  of  breeding  and 
rearing  her  child,  and  in  part  to  a  less  range  of  psychic  activities.  A 
man,  as  G.  Hirth  puts  it,  expressing  this  view  of  the  matter  (Wege  zur 
Liebe,  p.  342),  "has  not  only  room  in  his  intellectual  horizon  for  very 
various  interests,  but  his  power  of  erotic  expansion  is  much  greater  and 
more  differentiated  than  that  of  women,  although  he  may  lack  the 
intimacy  and  depth  of  a  woman's  devotion." 

It  may  be  argued  that,  since  variations  in  the  sexual  order  will 
inevitably  take  place,  whether  or  not  they  are  recognized  or  authorized, 
no  harm  is  likely  to  be  done  by  using  the  weight  of  social  and  legal 
authority  on  the  side  of  that  form  which  is  generally  regarded  as  the 
best,  and,  so  far  as  possible,  covering  the  other  forms  with  infamy. 
There  are  many  obvious  defects  in  such  an  attitude,  apart  from  the 
supremely  important  fact  that  to  cast  infamy  on  sexual  relationships 
is  to  exert  a  despicable  cruelty  on  women,  who  are  inevitably  the  chief 
sufferers.  Not  the  least  is  the  injustice  and  the  hampering  of  vital 
energy  which  it  inflicts  on  the  better  and  more  scrupulous  people  to  the 
advantage  of  the  worse  and  less  scrupulous.  This  always  happens  when 
authority  exerts  its  power  in  favor  of  a  form.  When,  in  the  thirteenth 
century,  Alexander  III — one  of  the  greatest  and  most  effective  potentates 
who  ever  ruled  Christendom — was  consulted  by  the  Bishop  of  Exeter 
concerning  subdeacons  who  persisted  in  marrying,  the  Pope  directed  him 
to  inquire  into  the  lives  and  characters  of  the  offenders;  if  they  were 
of  regular  habits  and  staid  morality,  they  were  to  be  forcibly  separated 
and  the  wives  driven  out;  if  they  were  men  of  notoriously  disorderly 
character,  they  were  to  be  permitted  to  retain  their  wives,  if  they  so 
desired  (Lea,  History  of  Sacerdotal  Celibacy,  third  edition,  vol.  i,  p. 
396).  It  was  an  astute  policy,  and  was  carried  out  by  the  same  Pope 
elsewhere,  but  it  is  easy  to  see  that  it  was  altogether  opposed  to  morality 
in  every  sense  of  the  term.  It  destroyed  the  happiness  and  the  effi- 
ciency of  the  best  men;  it  left  the  worst  men  absolutely  free.  To-day 
we  are  quite  willing  to  recognize  the  evil  result  of  this  policy;  it  was 
dictated  by  a  Pope  and  carried  out  seven  hundred  years  ago.  Yet  in 
England  we  carry  out  exactly  the  same  policy  to-day  by  means  of  our 
separation  orders,  which  are  scattered  broadcast  among  the  popula- 
tion. None  of  the  couples  thus  separated- — and  never  disciplined  to 
celibacy  as  are  the  Catholic  clergy  of  to-day — may  marry  again;  we, 
in  effect,  bid  the  more  scrupulous  among  them  to  become  celibates,  and 
to  the  less  scrupulous  we  grant  permission  to  do  as  they  like.  This 
process  is  carried  on  by  virtue  of  the  collective  inertia  of  the  community, 
and  when  it  is  supported  by  arguments,  if  that  ever  happens,  they  are 
of  an  antiquarian  character  which  can  only  call  forth  a  pitying  smile. 


MARRIAGE.  497 

It  may  be  added  that  there  is  a  further  reason  why  the  custom  of 
branding  sexual  variations  from  the  norm  as  "immoral"  is  not  so  harm- 
less as  some  affect  to  believe:  such  variations  appear  to  be  not  uncom- 
mon among  men  and  women  of  superlative  ability  whose  powers  are 
needed  unimpeded  in  the  service  of  mankind.  To  attempt  to  fit  such 
persons  into  the  narrow  moulds  which  suit  the  majority  is  not  only  an 
injustice  to  them  as  individuals,  but  it  is  an  offence  against  society, 
which  may  fairly  claim  that  its  best  members  shall  not  be  hampered  in 
its  service.  The  notion  that  the  person  whose  sexual  needs  differ  from 
those  of  the  average  is  necessarily  a  socially  bad  person,  is  a  notion 
unsupported  by  facts.     Every  case  must  be  judged  on  its  own  merits. 

Undoubtedly  the  most  common  variation  from  normal 
monogamy  has  in  all  stages  of  human  culture  been  polygyny  or 
the  sexual  union  of  one  man  with  more  than  one  woman.  It  has 
sometimes  been  socially  and  legally  recognized,  and  sometimes 
unrecognized,  but  in  either  ease  it  has  not  failed  to  occur. 
Polyandry,  or  the  union  of  a  woman  with  more  than  one  man, 
has  been  comparatively  rare  and  for  intelligible  reasons:  men 
have  most  usually  been  in  a  better  position,  economically  and 
legally,  to  organize  a  household  with  themselves  as  the  centre; 
a  woman  is,  unlike  a  man,  by  nature  and  often  by  custom 
unfitted  for  intercourse  for  considerable  periods  at  a  time;  a 
woman,  moreover,  has  her  thoughts  and  affections  more  con- 
centrated on  her  children.  Apart  from  this  the  biological  mas- 
culine traditions  point  to  polygyny  much  more  than  the  feminine 
traditions  point  to  polyandry.  Although  it  is  true  that  a  woman 
can  undergo  a  much  greater  amount  of  sexual  intercourse  than 
a  man,  it  also  remains  true  that  the  phenomena  of  courtship  in 
nature  have  made  it  the  duty  of  the  male  to  be  alert  in  offering 
his  sexual  attention  to  the  female,  whose  part  it  has  been  to 
suspend  her  choice  coyly  until  she  is  sure  of  her  preference. 
Polygynic  conditions  have  also  proved  advantageous,  as  they  have 
permitted  the  most  vigorous  and  successful  members  of  a  com- 
munity to  have  the  largest  number  of  mates  and  so  to  transmit 
their  own  superior  qualities. 

"Polygamy,"  writes  Woods  Hutchinson  {Contemporary  Review, 
Oct.,  1904),  though  he  recognizes  the  advantages  of  monogamy,  "as  a 
racial  institution,  among  animals  as  among  men,  has  many  solid  and 

32 


498  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

weighty  considerations  in  its  favor,  and  has  resulted  in  both  human  and 
pre-human  times,  in  the  production  of  a  very  high  type  of  both  indi- 
vidual and  social  development."  He  points  out  that  it  promotes  intelli- 
gence, cooperation,  and  division  of  labor,  while  the  keen  competition  for 
women  weeds  out  the  weaker  and  less  attractive  males. 

Among  our  European  ancestors,  alike  among  Germans  and  Celts, 
polygyny  and  other  sexual  forms  existed  as  occasional  variations.  Tacitus 
noted  polygyny  in  Germany,  and  Csesar  found  in  Britain  that  brothers 
would  hold  their  wives  in  common,  the  children  being  reckoned  to  the 
man  to  whom  the  woman  had  been  first  given  in  marriage  (see,  e.g., 
Traill's  Social  England,  vol.  i,  p.  103,  for  a  discussion  of  this  point). 
The  husband's  assistant,  also,  who  might  be  called  in  to  impregnate  the 
wife  when  the  husband  was  impotent,  existed  in  Germany,  and  was 
indeed  a  general  Indo-Germanic  institution  (Schrader,  Reallexicon,  art. 
"Zeugungshelfer" ) .  The  corresponding  institution  of  the  concubine  has 
been  still  more  deeply  rooted  and  widespread.  Up  to  comparatively 
modern  times,  indeed,  in  accordance  with  the  traditions  of  Roman  law, 
the  concubine  held  a  recognized  and  honorable  position,  below  that  of  a 
wife  but  with  definite  legal  rights,  though  it  was  not  always,  or  indeed 
usually,  legal  for  a  married  man  to  have  a  concubine.  In  ancient  Wales, 
as  well  as  in  Rome,  the  concubine  was  accepted  and  never  despised  (R. 
B.  Holt,  "Marriage  Laws  of  the  Cymri,"  Journal  Anthropological  Insti- 
tute, Aug.  and  Nov.,  1898,  p.  155).  The  fact  that  when  a  concubine 
entered  the  house  of  a  married  man  her  dignity  and  legal  position  were 
less  than  those  of  the  wife  preserved  domestic  peace  and  safeguarded 
the  wife's  interests.  (A  Korean  husband  cannot  take  a  concubine  under 
his  roof  without  his  wife's  permission,  but  she  rarely  objects,  and  seems 
to  enjoy  the  companionship,  says  Louise  Jordan  Miln,  Quaint  Korea, 
1895,  p.  92.)  In  old  Europe,  we  must  remember,  as  Dufour  points  out 
in  speaking  of  the  time  of  Charlemagne  (Histoire  de  la  Prostitution, 
vol.  iii,  p.  226),  "concubine"  was  an  honorable  term;  the  concubine  was 
by  no  means  a  mistress,  and  she  could  be  accused  of  adultery  just  the 
same  as  a  wife.  In  England,  late  in  the  thirteenth  century,  Bracton 
speaks  of  the  concubina  legitima  as  entitled  to  certain  rights  and  con- 
siderations, and  it  was  the  same  in  other  parts  of  Europe,  sometimes  for 
several  centuries  later  (see  Lea,  History  of  Sacerdotal  Celibacy,  vol.  i, 
p.  230).  The  early  Christian  Church  was  frequently  inclined  to  recog- 
nize the  concubine,  at  all  events  if  attached  to  an  unmarried  man, 
for  we  may  trace  in  the  Church  "the  wish  to  look  upon  every  permanent 
union  of  man  or  woman  as  possessing  the  character  of  a  marriage  in 
the  eyes  of  God,  and,  therefore,  in  the  judgment  of  the  Church"  (art. 
"Concubinage,"  Smith  and  Cheetham,  Dictionary  of  Christian  Antiqui- 
ties). This  was  the  feeling  of  St.  Augustine  (who  had  himself,  before 
his  conversion,  had  a  concubine  who  was  apparently  a  Christian),  and 


MAEEIAGE.  499 

the  Council  of  Toledo  admitted  an  unmarried  man  who  was  faithful  to 
a  concubine.  As  the  law  of  the  Catholic  Church  grew  more  and  more 
rigid,  it  necessarily  lost  touch  with  human  needs.  It  was  not  so  in  the 
early  Church  during  the  great  ages  of  its  vital  growth.  In  those  ages 
even  the  strenuous  general  rule  of  monogamy  was  relaxed  when  such 
relaxation  seemed  reasonable.  This  was  so,  for  instance,  in  the  case  of 
sexual  impotency.  Thus  early  in  the  eighth  century  Gregory  II,  writing 
to  Boniface,  the  apostle  of  Germany,  in  answer  to  a  question  by  the 
latter,  replies  that  when  a  wife  is  incapable  from  physical  infirmity 
from  fulfilling  her  marital  duties  it  is  permissible  for  the  husband  to 
take  a  second  wife,  though  he  must  not  withdraw  maintenance  from  the 
first.  A  little  later  Archbishop  Egbert  of  York,  in  his  Dialogus  de 
Institutione  Ecclesiastica,  though  more  cautiously,  admits  that  when 
one  of  two  married  persons  is  infirm  the  other,  with  the  permission  of 
the  infirm  one,  may  marry  again,  but  the  infirm  one  is  not  allowed  to 
marry  again  during  the  other's  life.  Impotency  at  the  time  of  marriage, 
of  course,  made  the  marriage  void  without  the  intervention  of  any 
ecclesiastical  law.  But  Aquinas,  and  later  theologians,  allow  that  an 
excessive  disgust  for  a  wife  justifies  a  man  in  regarding  himself  as 
impotent  in  relation  to  her.  These  rules  are,  of  course,  quite  distinct 
from  the  permissions  to  break  the  marriage  laws  granted  to  kings  and 
princes ;  such  permissions  do  not  count  as  evidence  of  the  Church's  rules, 
for,  as  the  Council  of  Constantinople  prudently  decided  in  809,  "Divine 
law  can  do  nothing  against  Kings"  ( art.  "Bigamy,"  Dictionary  of  Chris- 
tian Antiquities ) .  The  law  of  monogamy  was  also  relaxed  in  cases  of 
enforced  or  voluntary  desertion.  Thus  the  Council  of  Vermerie  (752) 
enacted  that  if  a  wife  will  not  accompany  her  husband  when  he  is  com- 
pelled to  follow  his  lord  into  another  land,  he  may  marry  again,  pro- 
vided he  sees  no  hope  of  returning.  Theodore  of  Canterbury  (688), 
again,  pronounces  that  if  a  wife  is  carried  away  by  the  enemy  and  her 
husband  cannot  redeem  her,  he  may  marry  again  after  an  interval  of  a 
year,  or,  if  there  is  a  chance  of  redeeming  her,  after  an  interval  of  five 
years;  the  wife  may  do  the  same.  Such  rules,  though  not  general, 
show,  as  Meyrick  points  out  (art.  "Marriage,"  Dictionary  of  Christian 
Antiquities) ,  a  willingness  "to  meet  particular  cases  as  they  arise." 

As  the  Canon  law  grew  rigid  and  the  Catholic  Church  lost  its  vital 
adaptibility,  sexual  variations  ceased  to  be  recognized  within  its  sphere. 
We  have  to  wait  for  the  Reformation  for  any  further  movement.  Many 
of  the  early  Protestant  Reformers,  especially  in  Germany,  were  prepared 
to  admit  a  considerable  degree  of  vital  flexibility  in  sexual  relationships. 
Thus  Luther  advised  married  women  with  impotent  husbands,  in  cases 
where  there  was  no  wish  or  opportunity  for  divorce,  to  have  sexual  rela- 
tions with  another  man,  by  preference  the  husband's  brother;  the  chil- 
dren were  to  be  reckoned  to  the  husband  ("Die  Sexuelle  Frage  bei 
Luther,"  Mutterschutz,  Sept.,  1908). 


500  PSYCHOLOGY    OP    SEX. 

In  England  the  Puritan  spirit,  which  so  largely  occupied  itself 
with  the  reform  of  marriage,  could  not  fail  to  be  concerned  with  the 
question  of  sexual  variations,  and  from  time  to  time  we  find  the  proposal 
to  legalize  polygyny.  Thus,  in  1658,  "A  Person  of  Quality"  published 
in  London  a  small  pamphlet  dedicated  to  the  Lord  Protector,  entitled 
A  Remedy  for  TJncleanness.  It  was  in  the  form  of  a  number  of  queries, 
asking  why  we  should  not  admit  polygamy  for  the  avoidance  of  adultery 
and  infanticide.  The  writer  inqviires  whether  it  may  not  "stand  with  a 
gracious  spirit,  and  be  every  way  consistent  with  the  principles  of  a 
man  fearing  God  and  loving  holiness,  to  have  more  women  than  one  to 

his  proper  use He  that  takes  another  man's  ox  or  ass  is 

doubtless  a  transgressor;  but  he  that  puts  himself  out  of  the  occasion 
of  that  temptation  by  keeping  of  his  own  seems  to  be  a  right  honest 
and  well-meaning  man." 

More  than  a  century  later  (1780),  an  able,  learned,  and  distin- 
guished London  clergyman  of  high  character  (who  had  been  a  lawyer 
before  entering  the  Church ) ,  the  Rev.  Martin  Madan,  also  advocated 
polygamy  in  a  book  called  Thelyphthora ;  or,  a  Treatise  on  Female  Ruin. 
Madan  had  been  brought  into  close  contact  with  prostitution  through 
a  chaplaincy  at  the  Lock  Hospital,  and,  like  the  Puritan  advocate  of 
polygamy,  he  came  to  the  conclusion  that  only  by  the  reform  of  marriage 
is  it  possible  to  work  against  prostitution  and  the  evils  of  sexual  inter- 
course outside  marriage.  His  remarkable  book  aroused  much  contro- 
versy and  strong  feeling  against  the  author,  so  that  he  found  it  desirable 
to  leave  London  and  settle  in  the  country.  Projects  of  marriage  reform 
have  never  since  come  from  the  Church,  but  from  philosophers  and 
moralists,  though  not  rarely  from  writers  of  definitely  religious  charac- 
ter. Senancour,  who  was  so  delicate  and  sensitive  a  moralist  in  the 
sexual  sphere,  introduced  a  temperate  discussion  of  polygamy  into  his 
Be  T 'Amour  (vol.  ii,  pp.  117-126).  It  seemed  to  him  to  be  neither  posi- 
tively contrary  nor  positively  conformed  to  the  general  tendency  of  our 
present  conventions,  and  he  concluded  that  "the  method  of  conciliation, 
in  part,  would  be  no  longer  to  require  that  the  union  of  a  man  and  a 
woman  should  only  cease  with  the  death  of  one  of  them."  Cope,  the 
biologist,  expressed  a  somewhat  more  decided  opinion.  Under  some  cir- 
cumstances, if  all  three  parties  agreed,  he  saw  no  objection  to  polygyny 
or  polyandry.  "There  are  some  cases  of  hardship,"  he  said,  "which  such 
permission  would  remedy.  Such,  for  instance,  would  be  the  case  where 
the  man  or  woman  had  become  the  victim  of  a  chronic  disease ;  or,  when 
either  party  should  be  childless,  and  in  other  contingencies  that  could  be 
imagined."  There  would  be  no  compulsion  in  any  direction,  and  full 
responsibility  as  at  present.  Such  cases  could  only  arise  exceptionally, 
and  would  not  call  for  social  antagonism.  For  the  most  part,  Cope 
remarks,  "the  best  way  to  deal  with  polygamy  is  to  let  it  alone"  (E.  D. 


MARRIAGE.  501 

Cope,  "The  Marriage  Problem,  Open  Court,  Nov.  15  and  22,  1888).  In 
England,  Dr.  John  Chapman,  the  editor  of  the  Westminster  Review,  and 
a  close  associate  of  the  leaders  of  the  Radical  movement  in  the  Victorian 
period,  was  opposed  to  State  dictation  as  regards  the  form  of  marriage, 
and  believed  that  a  certain  amount  of  sexual  variation  would  be  socially 
beneficial.  Thus  he  wrote  in  1884  (in  a  private  letter)  :  "I  think  that 
as  human  beings  become  less  selfish  polygamy  [i.e.,  polygyny],  and  even 
polyandry,  in  an  ennobled  form,  will  become  increasingly  frequent." 

James  Hinton,  who,  a  few  years  earlier,  had  devoted  much  thought 
and  attention  to  the  sexual  question,  and  regarded  it  as  indeed  the 
greatest  of  moral  problems,  was  strongly  in  favor  of  a  more  vital 
flexibility  of  marriage  regulations,  an  adaptation  to  human  needs  such 
as  the  early  Christian  Church  admitted.  Marriage,  he  declared,  must 
be  "subordinated  to  service,"  since  marriage,  like  the  Sabbath,  is  made 
for  man  and  not  man  for  marriage.  Thus  in  case  of  one  partner  becom- 
ing insane  he  would  permit  the  other  partner  to  marry  again,  the  claim 
of  the  insane  partner,  in  case  of  recovery,  still  remaining  valid.  That 
would  be  a  form  of  polygamy,  but  Hinton  was  careful  to  point  out  that 
by  "polygamy"  he  meant  "less  a  particular  marriage-order  than  such  an 
order  as  best  serves  good,  and  which  therefore  must  be  essentially 
variable.  Monogamy  may  be  good,  even  the  only  good  order,  if  of  free 
choice;  but  a  law  for  it  is  another  thing.  The  sexual  relationship  must 
be  a  natural  thing.  The  true  social  life  will  not  be  any  fixed  and 
definite  relationship,  as  of  monogamy,  polygamy,  or  anything  else,  but 
a  perfect  subordination  of  every  sexual  relationship  whatever  to  reason 
and  human  good." 

Ellen  Key,  who  is  an  enthusiastic  advocate  of  monogamy,  and  who 
believes  that  the  civilized  development  of  personal  love  removes  all  dan- 
ger of  the  growth  of  polygamy,  still  admits  the  existence  of  variations. 
She  has  in  mind  such  solutions  of  difficult  problems  as  Goethe  had  before 
him  when  he  proposed  at  first  in  his  Stella  to  represent  the  force  of 
affection  and  tender  memories  as  too  strong  to  admit  of  the  rupture  of 
an  old  bond  in  the  presence  of  a  new  bond.  The  problem  of  sexual  varia- 
tion, she  remarks,  however  (Liebe  und  Ethik,  p.  12),  has  changed  its 
form  under  modern  conditions;  it  is  no  longer  a  struggle  between  the 
demand  of  society  for  a  rigid  marriage-order  and  the  demand  of  the 
individual  for  sexual  satisfaction,  but  it  has  become  the  problem  of 
harmonizing  the  ennoblement  of  the  race  with  heightened  requirements 
of  erotic  happiness.  She  also  points  out  that  the  existence  of  a  partner 
who  requires  the  other  partner's  care  as  a  nurse  or  as  an  intellectual 
companion  by  no  means  deprives  that  other  partner  of  the  right  to 
fatherhood  or  motherhood,  and  that  such  rights  must  be  safeguarded 
(Ellen  Key,  Ueber  Liebe  und  Eke,  pp.  166-168). 

A  prominent  and  extreme  advocate  of  polygyny,  not  as  a  simple 


502  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

rare  variation,  but  as  a  marriage  order  superior  to  monogamy,  is  to  be 
found  at  the  present  day  in  Professor  Christian  von  Ehrenfels  of  Prague 
(see,  e.g.,  his  Sexualethik,  1908;  "Die  Postulate  des  Lebens,"  Sexual- 
Probleme,  Oct.,  1908;  and  letter  to  Ellen  Key  in  her  Ueber  Liebe  und 
Ehe,  p.  466 ) .  Ehrenfels  believes  that  the  number  of  men  inapt  for  satis- 
factory reproduction  is  much  larger  than  that  of  women,  and  that  there- 
fore when  these  are  left  out  of  account,  a  polygynic  marriage  order 
becomes  necessary.  He  calls  this  "reproduction-marriage"  (Zeugungs- 
ehe),  and  considers  that  it  will  entirely  replace  the  present  marriage 
order,  to  which  it  is  morally  superior.  It  would  be  based  on  private 
contracts.  Ehrenfels  holds  that  women  would  offer  no  objection,  as  a 
woman,  he  believes,  attaches  less  importance  to  a  man  as  a  wooer  than 
as  the  father  of  her  child.  Ehrenfels's  doctrine  has  been  seriously 
attacked  from  many  sides,  and  his  proposals  are  not  in  the  line  of  our 
progress.  Any  radical  modification  of  the  existing  monogamic  order  is 
not  to  be  expected,  even  if  it  were  generally  recognized,  which  cannot 
be  said  to  be  the  case,  that  it  is  desirable.  The  question  of  sexual  varia- 
tions, it  must  be  remembered,  is  not  a  question  of  introducing  an  entirely 
new  form  of  marriage,  but  only  of  recognizing  the  rights  of  individuals, 
in  exceptional  cases,  to  adopt  such  aberrant  forms,  and  of  recognizing 
the  corresponding  duties  of  such  individuals  to  accept  the  responsibilities 
of  any  aberrant  marriage  forms  they  may  find  it  best  to  adopt.  So  far 
as  the  question  of  sexual  variations  is  more  than  this,  it  is,  as  Hinton 
argued,  a  dynamical  method  of  working  towards  the  abolition  of  the 
perilous  and  dangerous  promiscuity  of  prostitution.  A  rigid  marriage 
order  involves  prostitution;  a  flexible  marriage  order  largely — though 
not,  it  may  be,  entirely — renders  prostitution  unnecessary.  The  demo- 
cratic morality  of  the  present  day,  so  far  as  the  indications  at  present 
go,  is  opposed  to  the  encouragement  of  a  quasi-sla,ve  class,  with  dimin- 
ished social  rights,  such  as  prostitutes  always  constitute  in  a  more  or 
less  marked  degree.  It  is  fairly  evident,  also,  that  the  rapidly  growing 
influence  of  medical  hygiene  is  on  the  same  side.  We  may,  therefore,  rea- 
sonably expect  in  the  future  a  slow  though  steady  increase  in  the  recog- 
nition, and  even  the  extension,  of  those  variations  of  the  monogamic 
order  which  have,  in  reality,  never  ceased  to  exist. 

It  is  lamentable  that  at  this  period  of  the  world's  history, 
nearly  two  thousand  years  after  the  wise  legislators  of  Eorne  had 
completed  their  work,  it  should  still  b\  necessary  to  conclude  that 
we  are  to-day  only  beginning  to  place  marriage  on  a  reasonable 
and  humane  basis.  I  have  repeatedly  pointed  out  how  largely  the 
Canon  law  has  been  responsible  for  this  arrest  of  development. 
One  may  say,  indeed,  that  the  whole  attitude  of  the  Church,  after 


MARRIAGE.  503 

it  had  once  acquired  complete  worldly  dominance,  must  be  held 
responsible.  In  the  earlier  centuries  the  attitude  of  Christianity 
was,  on  the  whole,  admirable.  It  held  aloft  great  ideals  but  it 
refrained  from  enforcing  those  ideals  at  all  costs ;  thus  its  ideals 
remained  genuine  and  could  not  degenerate  into  mere  hypocritical 
empty  forms ;  much  flexibility  was  allowed  when  it  seemed  to  be 
for  human  good  and  made  for  the  avoidance  of  evil  and  injustice. 
But  when  the  Church  attained  temporal  power,  and  when  that 
power  was  concentrated  in  the  hands  of  Popes  who  subordinated 
moral  and  religious  interests  to  political  interests,  all  the  claims 
of  reason  and  humanity  were  flung  to  the  winds.  The  ideal  was 
no  more  a  fact  than  it  was  before,  but  it  was  now  treated  as  a 
fact.  Human  relationships  remained  what  they  were  before,  as 
complicated  and  as  various,  but  henceforth  one  rigid  pattern, 
admirable  as  an  ideal  but  worse  than  empty  as  a  form,  was 
arbitrarily  set  up,  and  all  deviations  from  it  treated  either  as  non- 
existent or  damnable.  The  vitality  was  crushed  out  of  the  most 
central  human  institutions,  and  they  are  only  to-day  beginning 
to  lift  their  heads  afresh. 

If — to  sum  up — we  consider  the  course  which  the  regulation 
of  marriage  has  run  during  the  Christian  era,  the  only  period 
which  immediately  concerns  us,  it  is  not  difficult  to  trace  the 
main  outlines.  Marriage  began  as  a  private  arrangement,  which 
the  Church,  without  being  able  to  control,  was  willing  to  bless, 
as  it  also  blessed  many  other  secular  affairs  of  men,  making  no 
undue  attempt  to  limit  its  natural  flexibility  to  human  needs. 
Gradually  and  imperceptibly,  however,  without  the  medium  of 
any  law,  Christianity  gained  the  complete  control  of  marriage, 
coordinated  it  with  its  already  evolved  conceptions  of  the  evil  of 
lust,  of  the  virtue  of  chastity,  of  the  mortal  sin  of  fornication, 
and,  having  through  the  influence  of  these  dominating  concep- 
tions limited  the  flexibility  of  marriage  in  every  possible  direc- 
tion, it  placed  it  on  a  lofty  but  narrow  pedestal  as  the  sacrament 
of  matrimony.  For  reasons  which  by  no  means  lay  in  the  nature 
of  the  sexual  relationships,  but  which  probably  seemed  cogent  to 
sacerdotal  legislators  who  assimilated  it  to  ordination,  matrimony 
was  declared  indissoluble.     Nothing  was  so  easy  to  enter  as  the 


504  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

gate  of  niatriniom-,  but,  after  the  manner  of  a  mouse-trap,  it 
opened  inwards  and  not  outwards ;  once  in  there  was  no  way  out 
alive.  The  Church's  regulation  of  marriage  while,  like  the 
celibacy  of  the  clergy,  it  was  a  success  from  the  point  of  view  of 
ecclesiastical  politics,  and  even  at  first  from  the  point  of  view  of 
civilization,  for  it  at  least  introduced  order  into  a  chaotic  society, 
was  in  the  long  run  a  failure  from  the  point  of  view  of  society 
and  morals.  On  the  one  hand  it  drifted  into  absurd  subtleties 
and  quibbles;  on  the  other,  not  being  based  on  either  reason  or 
humanity,  it  had  none  of  that  vital  adaptability  to  the  needs  of 
life,  which  early  Christianity,  while  holding  aloft  austere  ideals, 
still  largely  retained.  On  the  side  of  tradition  this  code  of 
marriage  law  became  awkward  and  impracticable;  on  the 
biological  side  it  was  hopelessly  false.  The  way  was  thus  pre- 
pared for  the  Protestant  reintroduction  of  the  conception  of 
marriage  as  a  contract,  that  conception  being,  however,  brought 
forward  less  on  its  merits  than  as  a  protest  against  the  difficulties 
and  absurdities  of  the  Catholic  Canon  law.  The  contractive  view, 
which  still  largely  persists  even  to-day,  speedily  took  over  much 
of  the  Canon  law  doctrines  of  marriage,  becoming  in  practice  a 
kind  of  reformed  and  secularized  Canon  law.  It  was  somewhat 
more  adapted  to  modern  needs,  but  it  retained  much  of  the 
rigidity  of  the  Catholic  marriage  without  its  sacramental  charac- 
ter, and  it  never  made  any  attempt  to  become  more  than  nom- 
inally contractive.  It  has  been  of  the  nature  of  an  incongruous 
compromise  and  has  represented  a  transitional  phase  towards  free 
private  marriage.  We  can  recognize  that  phase  in  the  tendency, 
well  marked  in  all  civilized  lands,  to  an  ever  increasing  flexibility 
of  marriage.  The  idea,  and  even  the  fact,  of  marriage  by  con- 
sent and  divorce  by  failure  of  that  consent,  which  we  are  now 
approaching,  has  never  indeed  been  quite  extinct.  In  the  Latin 
countries  it  has  survived  with  the  tradition  of  Eoman  law ;  in  the 
English-speaking  countries  it  is  bound  up  with  the  spirit  of 
Puritanism  which  insists  that  in  the  things  that  concern  the 
individual  alone  the  individual  himself  shall  be  the  supreme 
judge.  That  doctrine  as  applied  to  marriage  was  in  England 
magnificently  asserted  by  the  genius  of  Milton,  and  in  America 


MARRIAGE.  505 

it  has  been  a  leaven  which  is  still  working  in  marriage  legislation 
towards  an  inevitable  goal  which  is  scarcely  yet  in  sight.  The 
marriage  system  of  the  future,  as  it  moves  along  its  present  course, 
will  resemble  the  old  Christian  system  in  that  it  will  recognize 
the  sacred  and  sacramental  character  of  the  sexual  relationship, 
and  it  will  resemble  the  civil  conception  in  that  it  will  insist  that 
marriage,  so  far  as  it  involves  procreation,  shall  be  publicly 
registered  by  the  State.  But  in  opposition  to  the  Church  it  will 
recognize  that  marriage,  in  so  far  as  it  is  purely  a  sexual  relation- 
ship, is  a  private  matter  the  conditions  of  which  must  be  left  to 
the  persons  who  alone  are  concerned  in  it;  and  in  opposition 
to  the  civil  theory  it  will  recognize  that  marriage  is  in  its  essence 
a  fact  and  not  a  contract,  though  it  may  give  rise  to  contracts, 
so  long  as  such  contracts  do  not  touch  that  essential  fact.  And 
in  one  respect  it  will  go  beyond  either  the  ecclesiastical  concep- 
tion or  the  civil  conception.  Man  has  in  recent  times  gained 
control  of  his  own  procreative  powers,  and  that  control  involves 
a  shifting  of  the  centre  of  gravity  of  marriage,  in  so  far  as  mar 
riage  is  an  affair  of  the  State,  from  the  vagina  to  the  child  which 
is  the  fruit  of  the  womb.  Marriage  as  a  state  institution  will 
centre,  not  around  the  sexual  relationship,  but  around  the  child 
which  is  the  outcome  of  that  relationship.  In  so  far  as  marriage 
is  an  inviolable  public  contract  it  will  be  of  such  a  nature  that 
it  will  be  capable  of  automatically  covering  with  its  protection 
every  child  that  is  born  into  the  world,  so  that  every  child  may 
possess  a  legal  mother  and  a  legal  father.  On  the  one  side,  there- 
fore, marriage  is  tending  to  become  less  stringent;  on  the  other 
side  it  is  tending  to  become  more  stringent.  On  the  personal 
side  it  is  a  sacred  and  intimate  relationship  with  which  the  State 
has  no  concern;  on  the  social  side  it  is  the  assumption  of  the 
responsible  public  sponsorship  of  a  new  member  of  the  State. 
Some  among  us  are  working  to  further  one  of  these  aspects  of 
marriage,  some  to  further  the  other  aspect.  Both  are  indis- 
pensable to  establish  a  perfect  harmony.  It  is  necessary  to  hold 
the  two  aspects  of  marriage  apart,  in  order  to  do  equal  justice  to 
the  individual  and  to  society,  but  in  so  far  as  marriage  approaches 
its  ideal  state  those  two  aspects  become  one. 


506  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

We  have  now  completed  the  discussion  of  marriage  as  it  pre- 
sents itself  to  the  modern  man  born  in  what  in  mediseval  days 
was  called  Christendom.  It  is  not  an  easy  subject  to  discuss. 
It  is  indeed  a  very  difficult  subject,  and  only  after  many  years  is 
it  possible  to  detect  the  main  drift  of  its  apparently  opposing 
and  confused  currents  when  one  is  oneself  in  the  midst  of  them. 
To  an  Englishman  it  is,  perhaps,  peculiarly  difficult,  for  the 
Englishman  is  nothing  if  not  insular;  in  that  fact  lie  whatever 
virtues  he  possesses,  as  well  as  their  reverse  sides.1 

Yet  it  is  worth  while  to  attempt  to  climb  to  a  height  from 
which  we  can  view  the  stream  of  social  tendency  in  its  true  pro- 
portions and  estimate  its  direction.  It  is  necessary  to  do  so  if  we 
value  our  mental  peace  in  an  age  when  men's  minds  are  agitated 
by  many  petty  movements  which  have  nothing  to  do  with  their 
great  temporal  interests,  to  say  nothing  of  their  eternal  interests. 
When  we  have  attained  a  wide  vision  of  the  solid  biological  facts 
of  life,  when  we  have  grasped  the  great  historical  streams  of  tra- 
dition,— which  together  make  up  the  map  of  human  affairs, — we 
can  face  serenely  the  little  social  transitions  which  take  place  in 
our  own  age,  as  they  have  taken  place  in  every  age. 

1  Howard,  in  his  judicial  History  of  Matrimonial  Institutions  (vol. 
ii.  pp.  96  et  seq. ) ,  cannot  refrain  from  drawing  attention  to  the  almost 
insanely  wild  character  of  the  language  used  in  England  not  so  many 
years  ago  by  those  who  opposed  marriage  with  a  deceased  wife's  sister, 
and  he  contrasts  it  with  the  much  more  reasonable  attitude  of  the 
Catholic  Church.  "Pictures  have  been  drawn,"  he  remarks,  "of  the 
moral  anarchy  such  marriages  must  produce,  which  are  read  by  Ameri- 
can, Colonial,  and  Continental  observers  with  a  bewilderment  that  is 
not  unmixed  with  disgust,  and  are,  indeed,  a  curious  illustration  of  the 
extreme  insularity  of  the  English  mind."  So  recently  as  A.  D.  1908  a 
bill  was  brought  into  the  British  House  of  Lords  proposing  that  deser- 
tion without  cause  for  two  years  shall  be  a  ground  for  divorce,  a 
reasonable  and  humane  measure  which  is  law  in  most  parts  of  the 
civilized  world.  The  Lord  Chancellor  (Lord  Loreburn),  a  Liberal,  and 
in  the  sphere  of  politics  an  enlightened  and  sagacious  leader,  declared 
that  such  a  proposal  was  "absolutely  impossible."  The  House  rejected 
the  proposal  by  61  votes  to  2.  Even  the  marriage  decrees  of  the  Council 
of  Trent  were  not  affirmed  by  such  an  overwhelming  majority.  In  mat- 
ters of  marriage  legislation  England  has  scarcely  yet  emerged  from  the 
Middle  Ages. 


CHAPTER  XI. 

THE  ART  OF  LOVE. 

Marriage  Not  Only  for  Procreation — Theologians  on  the  Sacra- 
mentum  Solationis — Importance  of  the  Art  of  Love — The  Basis  of 
Stability  in  Marriage  and  the  Condition  for  Right  Procreation — The  Art 
of  Love  the  Bulwark  Against  Divorce — The  Unity  of  Love  and  Marriage 
a  Principle  of  Modern  Morality — Christianity  and  the  Art  of  Love — 
Ovid — The  Art  of  Love  Among  Primitive  Peoples — Sexual  Initiation  in 
Africa  and  Elsewhere — The  Tendency  to  Spontaneous  Development  of  the 
Art  of  Love  in  Early  Life — Flirtation — Sexual  Ignorance  in  Women — 
The  Husband's  Place  in  Sexual  Initiation — Sexual  Ignorance  in  Men — 
The  Husband's  Education  for  Marriage — The  Injury  Done  by  the  Ignor- 
ance of  Husbands — The  Physical  and  Mental  Results  of  Unskilful  Coitus 
— Women  Understand  the  Art  of  Love  Better  Than  Men — Ancient  and 
Modern  Opinions  Concerning  Frequency  of  Coitus — Variation  in  Sexual 
Capacity — The  Sexual  Appetite — The  Art  of  Love  Based  on  the  Biological 
Facts  of  Courtship — The  Art  of  Pleasing  Women — The  Lover  Compared 
to  the  Musician — The  Proposal  as  a  Part  of  Courtship — Divination  in 
the  Art  of  Love — The  Importance  of  the  Preliminaries  in  Courtship — 
The  Unskilful  Husband  Frequently  the  Cause  of  the  Frigid  Wife — The 
Difficulty  of  Courtship — Simultaneous  Orgasm — The  Evils  of  Incomplete 
Gratification  in  Women — Coitus  Interruptus — Coitus  Reservatus — The 
Human  Method  of  Coitus — Variations  in  Coitus — Posture  in  Coitus — 
The  Best  Time  for  Coitus — The  Influence  of  Coitus  in  Marriage — The 
Advantages  of  Absence  in  Marriage — The  Risks  of  Absence — Jealousy 
— The  Primitive  Function  of  Jealousy — Its  Predominance  Among  Ani- 
mals, Savages,  etc.,  and  in  Pathological  States — An  Anti-Social  Emotion 
— Jealousy  Incompatible  with  the  Progress  of  Civilization — The  Possi- 
bility of  Loving  More  Than  One  Person  at  a  Time — Platonic  Friendship 
— The  Conditions  Which  Make  It  Possible — The  Maternal  Element  in 
Woman's  Love — The  Final  Development  of  Conjugal  Love — The  Problem 
of  Love  One  of  the  Greatest  of  Social  Questions. 

It  will  be  clear  from  the  preceding  discussion  that  there 
are  two  elements  in  every  marriage  so  far  as  that  marriage  is 
complete.  On  the  one  hand  marriage  is  a  union  prompted  by 
mutual  love  and  only  sustainable  as  a  reality,  apart  from  its 
mere  formal  side,  by  the  cultivation  of  such  love.     On  the  other 

(507) 


508  PSYCHOLOGY    OP    SEX. 

hand  marriage  is  a  method  for  propagating  the  race  and  having 
its  end  in  offspring.  In  the  first  aspect  its  aim  is  erotic,  in  the 
second  parental.  Both  these  ends  have  long  been  generally 
recognized.  We  find  them  set  forth,  for  instance,  in  the  mar- 
riage service  of  the  Church  of  England,  where  it  is  stated  that 
marriage  exists  both  for  "the  mutual  societ3r,  help  and  comfort 
that  the  one  ought  to  have  of  the  other/'  and  also  for  "the  pro- 
creation of  children."  Without  the  factor  of  mutual  love  the 
proper  conditions  for  procreation  cannot  exist;  without  the 
factor  of  procreation  the  sexual  union,  however  beautiful  and 
sacred  a  relationship  it  may  in  itself  be,  remains,  in  essence, 
a  private  relationship,  incomplete  as  a  marriage  and  without 
public  significance.  It  becomes  necessary,  therefore,  to  supple- 
ment the  preceding  discussion  of  marriage  in  its  general  out- 
lines by  a  final  and  more  intimate  consideration  of  marriage  in 
its  essence,  as  embracing  the  art  of  love  and  the  science  of  pro- 
creation. 

There  lias  already  been  occasion  from  time  to  time  to  refer  to 
those  who,  starting  from  various  points  of  view,  have  sought  to  limit 
the  scope  of  marriage  and  to  suppress  one  or  other  of  its  elements.  ( See 
e.g.,  ante,  p.  135.) 

In  modern  times  the  tendency  has  been  to  exclude  the  factor  of 
procreation,  and  to  regard  the  relationship  of  marriage  as  exclusively 
lying  in  the  relationship  of  the  two  parties  to  each  other.  Apart  from 
the  fact,  which  it  is  unnecessary  again  to  call  attention  to,  that,  from 
the  public  and  social  point  of  view,  a  marriage  without  children,  how- 
ever important  to  the  two  persons  concerned,  is  a  relationship  without 
any  public  significance,  it  must  further  be  said  that,  in  the  absence  of 
children,  even  the  personal  erotic  life  itself  is  apt  to  suffer,  for  in  the 
normal  erotic  life,  especially  in  women,  sexual  love  tends  to  grow  into 
parental  love.  Moreover,  the  full  development  of  mutual  love  and 
dependence  is  with  difficulty  attained,  and  there  is  absence  of  that  closest 
of  bonds,  the  mutual  cooperation  of  two  persons  in  producing  a  new 
person.  The  perfect  and  complete  marriage  in  its  full  development  is  a 
trinity. 

Those  who  seek  to  eliminate  the  erotic  factor  from  marriage  as 
unessential,  or  at  all  events  as  only  permissible  when  strictly  sub- 
ordinated to  the  end  of  procreation,  have  made  themselves  heard  from 
time  to  time  at  various  periods.  Even  the  ancients,  Greeks  and  Eomans 
alike,  in  their  more  severe  moments  advocated  the  elimination  of  the 


ART    OF    LOVE.  509 

erotic  element  from  marriage,  and  its  confinement  to  extra-marital  rela- 
tionships, that  is  so  far  as  men  were  concerned;  for  the  erotic  needs  of 
married  women  they  had  no  provision  to  make.  Montaigne,  soaked  in 
classic  traditions,  has  admirably  set  forth  the  reasons  for  eliminating 
the  erotic  interest  from  marriage:  "One  does  not  marry  for  oneself, 
whatever  may  be  said;  a  man  marries  as  much,  or  more,  for  his  pos- 
terity, for  his  family;     the  usage  and  interest  of  marriage  touch  our 

race  beyond  ourselves Thus  it  is  a  kind  of  incest  to  employ, 

in  this  venerable  and  sacred  parentage,  the  efforts  and  the  extravagances 
of  amorous  license"  (Essais,  Bk.  i,  Ch.  XXIX;  Bk.  iii,  Ch.  V).  This 
point  of  view  easily  commended  itself  to  the  early  Christians,  who,  how- 
ever, deliberately  overlooked  its  reverse  side,  the  establishment  of  erotic 
interests  outside  marriage.  "To  have  intercourse  except  for  procrea- 
tion," said  Clement  of  Alexandria  (Pcedagogus,  Bk.  ii,  Ch.  X),  "is  to  do 
injury  to  Nature."  While,  however,  that  statement  is  quite  true  of  the 
lower  animals,  it  is  not  true  of  man,  and  especially  not  true  of  civilized 
man,  whose  erotic  needs  are  far  more  developed,  and  far  more  intimately 
associated  with  the  finest  and  highest  part  of  the  organism,  than  is  the 
ease  among  animals  generally.  For  the  animal,  sexual  desire,  except 
when  called  forth  by  the  conditions  involved  by  procreative  necessities, 
has  no  existence.  It  is  far  otherwise  in  man,  for  whom,  even  when  the 
question  of  procreation  is  altogether  excluded,  sexual  love  is  still  an 
insistent  need,  and  even  a  condition  of  the  finest  spiritual  development. 
The  Catholic  Church,  therefore,  while  regarding  with  admiration  a  con- 
tinence in  marriage  which  excluded  sexual  relations  except  for  the  end 
of  procreation,  has  followed  St.  Augustine  in  treating  intercourse  apart 
from  procreation  with  considerable  indulgence,  as  only  a  venial  sin. 
Here,  however,  the  Church  was  inclined  to  draw  the  line,  and  it  appears 
that  in  1679  Innocent  XI  condemned  the  proposition  that  "the  conjugal 
act,  practiced  for  pleasure  alone,  is  exempt  even  from  venial  sin." 

Protestant  theologians  have  been  inclined  to  go  further,  and  therein 
they  found  some  authority  even  in  Catholic  writers.  John  a  Lasco,  the 
Catholic  Bishop  who  became  a  Protestant  and  settled  in  England  during 
Edward  VI's  reign,  was  following  many  mediaeval  theologians  when  he 
recognized  the  sacramentum  solationis,  in  addition  to  protest,  as  an 
element  of  marriage.  Cranmer,  in  his  marriage  service  of  1549,  stated 
that  "mutual  help  and  comfort,"  as  well  as  procreation,  enter  into  the 
object  of  marriage  (Wickham  Legg,  Ecclesiological  Essays,  p.  204; 
Howard,  Matrimonial  Institutions,  vol.  i,  p.  398).  Modern  theologians 
speak  still  more  distinctly.  "The  sexual  act,"  says  Northcote  (Chris- 
tianity and  Sex-Problems,  p.  55),  "is  a  love  act.  Duly  regulated,  it 
conduces  to  the  ethical  welfare  of  the  individual  and  promotes  his  effi- 
ciency as  a  social  unit.  The  act  itself  and  its  surrounding  emotions 
stimulate  within  the  organism  the  powerful  movements  of  a  vast  psychic 


510  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

life."  At  an  earlier  period  also,  Schleiermacher,  in  his  Letters  on 
Lucinde,  had  pointed  out  the  great  significance  of  love  for  the  spiritual 
development  of  the  individual. 

Edward  Carpenter  truly  remarks,  in  Love's  Coming  of  Age,  that 
sexual  love  is  not  only  needed  for  physical  creation,  but  also  for  spiritual 
creation.  Bloch,  again,  in  discussing  this  question  (The  Sexual  Life  of 
Our  Time,  Ch.  VI)  concludes  that  "love  and  the  sexual  embrace  have 
not  only  an  end  in  procreation,  they  constitute  an  end  in  themselves, 
and  are  necessary  for  the  life,  development,  and  inner  growth  of  the 
individual  himself." 

It  is  argued  by  some,  who  admit  mutual  love  as  a  constituent 
part  of  marriage,  that  such  love,  once  recognized  at  the  outset, 
may  be  taken  for  granted,  and  requires  no  further  discussion; 
there  is,  they  believe,  no  art  of  love  to  be  either  learnt  or  taught ; 
it  comes  by  nature.  Nothing  could  be  further  from  the  truth, 
most  of  all  as  regards  civilized  man.  Even  the  elementary  fact 
of  coitus  needs  to  be  taught.  No  one  could  take  a  more  austerely 
Puritanic  view  of  sexual  affairs  than  Sir  James  Paget,  and  yet 
Paget  (in  his  lecture  on  "Sexual  Hypochondriasis")  declared 
that  "Ignorance  about  sexual  affairs  seems  to  be  a  notable  char- 
acteristic of  the  more  civilized  part  of  the  human  race.  Among 
ourselves  it  is  certain  that  the  method  of  copulating  needs  to  be 
taught,  and  that  they  to  whom  it  is  not  taught  remain  quite 
ignorant  about  it."  Gallard,  again,  remarks  similarly  (in  his 
Clinique  des  Maladies  des  Femmes)  that  young  people,  like 
Daphnis  in  Longus's  pastoral,  need  a  beautiful  Lycenion  to  give 
them  a  solid  education,  practical  as  well  as  theoretical,  in  these 
matters,  and  he  considers  that  mothers  should  instruct  their 
daughters  at  marriage,  and  fathers  their  sons.  Philosophers 
have  from  time  to  time  recognized  the  gravity  of  these  questions 
and  have  discoursed  concerning  them;  thus  Epicurus,  as  Plu- 
tarch tells  us.1  would  discuss  with  his  disciples  various  sexual 
matters,  such  as  the  proper  time  for  coitus;  but  then,  as  now, 
there  were  obscurantists  who  would  leave  even  the  central  facts 
of  life  to  the  hazards  of  chance  or  ignorance,  and  these  presumed 
to  blame  the  philosopher. 


1  Qucestionum  Convivalium,  lib.  iii,  qusestio  6. 


ART    OF    LOVE.  511 

There  is,  however,  much  more  to  be  learnt  in  these  matters 
than  the  mere  elementary  facts  of  sexual  intercourse.  The  art 
of  love  certainly  includes  such  primary  facts  of  sexual  hygiene, 
but  it  involves  also  the  whole  erotic  discipline  of  marriage,  and 
that  is  why  its  significance  is  so  great,  for  the  welfare  and 
happiness  of  the  individual,  for  the  stability  of  sexual  unions, 
and  indirectly  for  the  race,  since  the  art  of  love  is  ultimately  the 
art  of  attaining  the  right  conditions  for  procreation. 

"It  seems  extremely  probable/'  wrote  Professor  E.  D.  Cope,1 
"that  if  this  subject  could  be  properly  understood,  and  become,  in 
the  details  of  its  practical  conduct,  a  part  of  a  written  social 
science,  the  monogamic  marriage  might  attain  a  far  more  general 
success  than  is  often  found  in  actual  life."  There  can  be  no 
doubt  whatever  that  this  is  the  case.  In  the  great  majority  of 
marriages  success  depends  exclusively  upon  the  knowledge  of  the 
art  of  love  possessed  by  the  two  persons  who  enter  into  it.  A 
life-long  monogamic  union  may,  indeed,  persist  in  the  absence  of 
the  slightest  inborn  or  acquired  art  of  love,  out  of  religious 
resignation  or  sheer  stupidity.  But  that  attitude  is  now  becom- 
ing less  common.  As  we  have  seen  in  the  previous  chapter, 
divorces  are  becoming  more  frequent  and  more  easily  obtainable 
in  every  civilized  country.  This  is  a  tendency  of  civilization; 
it  is  the  result  of  a  demand  that  marriage  should  be  a  real  rela- 
tionship, and  that  when  it  ceases  to  be  real  as  a  relationship  it 
should  also  cease  as  a  form.  That  is  an  inevitable  tendency, 
involved  in  our  growing  democratization,  for  the  democracy 
seems  to  care  more  for  realities  than  for  forms,  however  vener- 
able. We  cannot  fight  against  it;  and  we  should  be  wrong  to 
fight  against  it  even  if  we  could. 

Yet  while  we  are  bound  to  aid  the  tendency  to  divorce,  and 
to  insist  that  a  valid  marriage  needs  the  wills  of  two  persons  to 
maintain  it,  it  is  difficult  for  anyone  to  argue  that  divorce  is  in 
itself  desirable.  It  is  always  a  confession  of  failure.  Two  per- 
sons, who,  if  they  have  been  moved  in  the  slightest  degree  by  the 
normal  and  regular  impulse  of  sexual  selection,  at  the  outset 


1  E.  D.  Cope,  "The  Marriage  Problem,"  Open  Court.  Nov.  1888. 


512  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

regarded  each  other  as  lovable,  have,  on  one  side  or  the  other  or 
on  both,  proved  not  lovable.  There  has  been  a  failure  in  the 
fundamental  art  of  love.  If  we  are  to  counterbalance  facility  of 
divorce  our  only  sound  course  is  to  increase  the  stability  of 
marriage,  and  that  is  only  possible  by  cultivating  the  art  of  love, 
the  primal  foundation  of  marriage. 

It  is  by  no  means  unnecessary  to  emphasize  this  point. 
There  are  still  many  persons  who  have  failed  to  realize  it.  There 
are  even  people  who  seem  to  imagine  that  it  is  unimportant 
whether  or  not  pleasure  is  present  in  the  sexual  act.  "I  do  not 
believe  mutual  pleasure  in  the  sexual  act  has  any  particular  bear- 
ing on  the  happiness  of  life,"  once  remarked  Dr.  Howard  A. 
Kelly.1  Such  a  statement  means — if  indeed  it  means  anything — 
that  the  marriage  tie  has  no  "particular  bearing"  on  human 
happiness;  it  means  that  the  way  must  be  freely  opened  to 
adultery  and  divorce.  Even  the  most  perverse  ascetic  of  the 
Middle  Ages  scarcely  ventured  to  make  a  statement  so  flagrantly 
opposed  to  the  experiences  of  humanity,  and  the  fact  that  a  dis- 
tinguished gynecologist  of  the  twentieth  century  can  make  it, 
with  almost  the  air  of  stating  a  truism,  is  ample  justification  for 
the  emphasis  which  it  has  nowadays  become  necessary  to  place  on 
the  art  of  love.  "Uxor  enim  dignitatis  nomen  est,  non  volup- 
tatis,"  was  indeed  an  ancient  Pagan  dictum.  But  it  is  not  in 
harmony  with  modern  ideas.  It  was  not  even  altogether  in 
harmony  with  Christianity.  For  our  modern  morality,  as  Ellen 
Key  well  says,  the  unity  of  love  and  marriage  is  a  fundamental 
principle.2 

The  neglect  of  the  art  of  love  has  not  been  a  universal 
phenomenon ;  it  is  more  especially  characteristic  of  Christendom. 
The  spirit  of  ancient  Eome  undoubtedly  predisposed  Europe  to 
such  a  neglect,  for  with  their  rough  cultivation  of  the  military 
virtues  and  their  inaptitude  for  the  finer  aspects  of  civili- 
zation the  Romans  were  willing  to  regard  love  as  a  permissible 
indulgence,  but  they  were  not,  as  a  people,  prepared  to  cultivate 
it  as  an  art.     Their  poets  do  not,  in  this  matter,  represent  the 

1  Columbus  meeting  of  the  American  Medical  Association,  1900. 

2  Ellen  Key,  Ueber  Liehe  und  Ehe,  p.  24. 


ART    OP    LOVE.  513 

moral  feeling  of  their  best  people.  It  is  indeed  a  highly  significant 
fact  that  Ovid,  the  most  distinguished  Latin  poet  who  concerned 
himself  much  with  the  art  of  love,  associated  that  art  not  so  much 
with  morality  as  with  immorality.  As  he  viewed  it,  the  art  of 
love  was  less  the  art  of  retaining  a  woman  in  her  home  than  the 
art  of  winning  her  away  from  it ;  it  was  the  adulterer's  art  rather 
than  the  husband's  art.  Such  a  conception  would  be  impossible 
out  of  Europe,  but  it  proved  very  favorable  to  the  growth  of  the 
Christian  attitude  towards  the  art  of  love. 

Love  as  an  art,  as  well  as  a  passion,  seems  to  have  received  con- 
siderable study  in  antiquity,  though  the  results  of  that  study  have  per- 
ished. Cadmus  Milesius,  says  Suidas,  wrote  fourteen  great  volumes  on 
the  passion  of  love,  but  they  are  not  now  to  be  found.  Rohde  (Das 
Griechische  Roman,  p.  55)  has  a  brief  section  on  the  Greek  philosophic 
writers  on  love.  Bloch  (Beitrage  zur  Psychopathia  Sexualis,  Teil  I, 
p.  191)  enumerates  the  ancient  women  writers  who  dealt  with  the  art 
of  love.  Montaigne  {Essais,  liv.  ii,  Ch.  V)  gives  a  list  of  ancient 
classical  lost  books  on  love.  Burton  (Anatomy  of  Melancholy,  Bell's 
edition,  vol.  iii,  p.  2)  also  gives  a  list  of  lost  books  on  love.  Burton 
himself  dealt  at  length  with  the  manifold  signs  of  love  and  its  grievous 
symptoms.  Boissier  de  Sauvages,  early  in  the  eighteenth  century,  pub- 
lished a  Latin  thesis,  De  Amove,  discussing  love  somewhat  in  the  same 
spirit  as  Burton,  as  a  psychic  disease  to  be  treated  and  cured. 

The  breath  of  Christian  asceticism  had  passed  over  love;  it  was 
no  longer,  as  in  classic  days,  an  art  to  be  cultivated,  but  only  a  malady 
to  be  cured.  The  true  inheritor  of  the  classic  spirit  in  this,  as  in  many 
other  matters,  was  not  the  Christian  world,  but  the  world  of  Islam. 
The  Perfumed  Garden  of  the  Sheik  Nefzaoui  was  probably  written  in  the 
city  of  Tunis  early  in  the  sixteenth  century  by  an  author  who  belonged 
to  the  south  of  Tunis.  Its  opening  invocation  clearly  indicates  that  it 
departs  widely  from  the  conception  of  love  as  a  disease:  "Praise  be  to 
God  who  has  placed  man's  greatest  pleasures  in  the  natural  parts  of 
woman,  and  has  destined  the  natural  parts  of  man  to  afford  the  greatest 
enjoyments  to  woman."  The  Arabic  book,  El  Ktao,  or  "The  Secret 
Laws  of  Love,"  is  a  modern  work,  by  Omer  Haleby  Abu  Othman,  who 
was  born  in  Algiers  of  a  Moorish  mother  and  a  Turkish  father. 

For  Christianity  the  permission  to  yield  to  the  sexual 
impulse  at  all  was  merely  a  concession  to  human  weakness,  an 
indulgence  only  possible  when  it  was  carefully  hedged  and 
guarded  on  every  side.  Almost  from  the  first  the  Christians 
began  to  cultivate  the  art  of  virginity,  and  they  could  not  so 

23 


514  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SES. 

dislocate  their  point  of  view  as  to  approve  of  the  art  of  love.  All 
their  passionate  adoration  in  the  sphere  of  sex  went  out  towards 
chastity.  Possessed  by  such  ideals,  they  could  only  tolerate 
human  love  at  all  by  giving  to  one  special  form  of  it  a  religious 
sacramental  character,  and  even  that  sacramental  halo  imparted  to 
love  a  quasi-ascetic  character  which  precluded  the  idea  of  regard- 
ing love  as  an  art.1  Love  gained  a  religious  element  but  it  lost 
a  moral  element,  since,  outside  Christianity,  the  art  of  love  is  part 
of  the  foundation  of  sexual  morality,  wherever  such  morality  in 
any  degree  exists.  In  Christendom  love  in  marriage  was  left  to 
shift  for  itself  as  best  it  might ;  the  art  of  love  was  a  dubious  art 
which  was  held  to  indicate  a  certain  commerce  with  immorality 
and  even  indeed  to  be  itself  immoral.  That  feeling  was  doubt- 
less strengthened  by  the  fact  that  Ovid  was  the  most  conspicuous 
master  in  literature  of  the  art  of  love.  His  literary  reputation — 
far  greater  than  it  now  seems  to  us2 — gave  distinction  to  his 
position  as  the  author  of  the  chief  extant  text-book  of  the  art  of 
love.  With  Humanism  and  the  Eenaissance  and  the  consequent 
realization  that  Christianity  had  overlooked  one  side  of  life, 
Ovid's  Ars  Amatoria  was  placed  on  a  pedestal  it  had  not  occupied 
before  or  since.  It  represented  a  step  forward  in  civilization ;  it: 
revealed  love  not  as  a  mere  animal  instinct  or  a  mere  pledged 
duty,  but  as  a  complex,  humane,  and  refined  relationship  which 
demanded  cultivation;  "arte  regendus  amor."     Boccaccio  made  a 


i  In  an  admirable  article  on  Friedrich  Schlegel's  Lucinde  (Hutter- 
schutz,  1906,  Heft  5),  Heinrieh  Meyer-Benfey,  in  pointing  out  that  the 
Catholic  sacramental  conception  of  marriage  licensed  love,  but  failed  to 
elevate  it,  regards  Lucinde,  with  all  its  defects,  as  the  first  expression 
of  the  unity  of  the  senses  and  the  soul,  and,  as  such,  the  basis  of  the 
new  ethics  of  love.  It  must,  however,  be  said  that  four  hundred  years 
earlier  Pontano  had  expressed  this  same  erotic  unity  far  more  robustly 
and  wholesomely  than  Schlegel,  though  the  Latin  verse  in  which  he 
wrote,  fresh  and  vital  as  it  is,  remained  without  influence.  Pontano's 
Carmina,  including  the  "De  Amore  Conjugali,"  have  at  length  been 
reprinted  in  a  scholarly  edition  by  Soldati. 

2  From  the  thirteenth  to  the  seventeenth  centuries  Ovid  was,  in 
reality,  the  most  popular  and  influential  classic  poet.  His  works  played 
a  large  part  in  moulding  Renaissance  literature,  not  least  in  England, 
where  Marlowe  translated  his  Amoves,  and  Shakespeare,  during  the  early 
years  of  his  literary  activity,  was  greatly  indebted  to  him  (see,  e.g., 
Sidney  Lee,  "Ovid  and  Shakespeare's  Sonnets,"  Quarterly  Review,  Ap., 
1909). 


ART    OF    LOVE.  515 

wise  teacher  put  Ovid's  Ars  Amatoria  into  the  hands  of  the 
young.  In  an  age  still  oppressed  by  the  mediaeval  spirit,  it  was  a 
much  needed  text-book,  but  it  possessed  the  fatal  defect,  as  a  text- 
book, of  presenting  the  erotic  claims  of  the  individual  as  divorced 
from  the  claims  of  good  social  order.  It  never  succeeded  in 
establishing  itself  as  a  generally  accepted  manual  of  love,  and 
in  the  eyes  of  many  it  served  to  stamp  the  subject  it  dealt  with 
as  one  that  lies  outside  the  limits  of  good  morals. 

When,  however,  we  take  a  wider  survey,  and  inquire  into  the 
discipline  for  life  that  is  imparted  to  the  young  in  many  parts  of 
the  world,  we  shall  frequently  find  that  the  art  of  love,  under- 
stood in  varying  ways,  is  an  essential  part  of  that  discipline. 
Summary,  though  generally  adequate,  as  are  the  educational 
methods  of  primitive  peoples,  they  not  seldom  include  a  training 
in  those  arts  which  render  a  woman  agreeable  to  a  man  and  a 
man  agreeable  to  a  woman  in  the  relationship  of  marriage,  and  it 
is  often  more  or  less  dimly  realized  that  courtship  is  not  a  mere 
preliminary  to  marriage,  but  a  biologically  essential  part  of  the 
marriage  relationship  throughout. 

Sexual  initiation  is  carried  out  very  thoroughly  in  Azimba  land, 
Central  Africa  H.  Crawford  Angus,  the  first  European  to  visit  the 
Azimba  people,  lived  among  them  for  a  year,  and  has  described  the 
Chensamwali,  or  initiation  ceremony,  of  girls.  "At  the  first  sign  of 
menstruation  in  a  young  girl,  she  is  taught  the  mysteries  of  womanhood, 
and  is  shown  the  different  positions  for  sexual  intercourse.  The  vagina 
is  handled  freely,  and  if  not  previously  enlarged  (which  may  have  taken 
place  at  the  harvest  festival  when  a  boy  and  girl  are  allowed  to  'keep 
house'  during  the  day-time  by  themselves,  and  when  quasi-intercourse 
takes  place)  it  is  now  enlarged  by  means  of  a  horn  or  corn-cob,  which  is 
inserted  and  secured  in  place  by  bands  of  bark  cloth.  When  all  signs 
[of  menstruation]  have  passed,  a  public  announcement  of  a  dance  is 
given  to  the  women  in  the  village.  At  this  dance  no  men  are  allowed  to 
be  present,  and  it  was  only  with  a  great  deal  of  trouble  that  I  managed 
to  witness  it.  The  girl  to  be  'danced'  is  led  back  from  the  bush  to  her 
mother's  hut  where  she  is  kept  in  solitude  to  the  morning  of  the  dance. 
On  that  morning  she  is  placed  on  the  ground  in  a  sitting  position,  while 
the  dancers  form  a  ring  around  her.  Several  songs  are  then  sung  with 
reference  to  the  genital  organs.  The  girl  is  then  stripped  and  made  to 
go  through  the  mimic  performance  of  sexual  intercourse,  and  if  the  move- 
ments are  not  enacted  properly,  as  is  often  the  case  when  the  girl  is 


516  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

timid  and  bashful,  one  of  the  older  women  will  take  her  place  and  show 
her  how  she  is  to  perform.  Many  songs  about  the  relation  between  men 
and  women  are  sung,  and  the  girl  is  instructed  as  to  all  her  duties  when 
she  becomes  a  wife.  She  is  also  instructed  that  during  the  time  of  her 
menstruation  she  is  unclean,  and  that  during  her  monthly  period  she 
must  close  her  vulva  with  a  pad  of  fibre  used  for  the  purpose.  The 
object  of  the  dance  is  to  inculcate  to  the  girl  the  knowledge  of  married 
life.  The  girl  is  taught  to  be  faithful  to  her  husband  and  to  try  to  bear 
children,  and  she  is  also  taught  the  various  arts  and  methods  of  making 
herself  seductive  and  pleasing  to  her  husband,  and  of  thus  retaining 
him  in  her  power."  (H.  Crawford  Angus,  "The  Chensamwali," 
Zeitschrift  filr  Ethnologic,  1898,  Heft  6,  p.  479). 

In  Abyssinia,  as  well  as  on  the  Zanzibar  coast,  according  to  Stecker 
(quoted  by  Ploss-Bartels,  Das  Weib,  Section  119)  young  girls  are  edu- 
cated in  buttock  movements  which  increase  their  charm  in  coitus. 
These  movements,  of  a  rotatory  character,  are  called  Duk-Duk.  To  be 
ignorant  of  Duk-Duk  is  a  great  disgrace  to  a  girl.  Among  the  Swahili 
women  of  Zanzibar,  indeed,  a  complete  artistic  system  of  hip-movements 
is  cultivated,  to  be  displayed  in  coitus.  It  prevails  more  especially  on 
the  coast,  and  a  Swahili  woman  is  not  counted  a  "lady"  (bibi)  unless 
she  is  acquainted  with  this  art.  From  sixty  to  eighty  young  women 
practice  this  buttock  dance  together  for  some  eight  hours  a  day,  laying 
aside  all  clothing,  and  singing  the  while.  The  public  are  not  admitted. 
The  dance,  which  is  a  kind  of  imitation  of  coitus,  has  been  described 
by  Zache  ("Sitten  und  Gebrauche  der  Suaheli,"  Zeitschrift  fur  Ethno- 
logie, 1899,  Heft  2-3,  p.  72).  The  more  accomplished  dancers  excite 
general  admiration.  During  the  latter  part  of  this  initiation  various 
feats  are  imposed,  to  test  the  girl's  skill  and  self-control.  For  instance, 
she  must  dance  up  to  a  fire  and  remove  from  the  midst  of  the  fire  a 
vessel  full  of  water  to  the  brim,  without  spilling  it.  At  the  end  of  three 
months  the  training  is  over,  and  the  girl  goes  home  in  festival  attire. 
She  is  now  eligible  for  marriage.  Similar  customs  are  said  to  prevail 
in  the  Dutch  East  Indies  and  elsewhere. 

The  Hebrews  had  erotic  dances,  which  were  doubtless  related  to 
the  art  of  love  in  marriage,  and  among  the  Greeks,  and  their  disciples 
the  Eomans,  the  conception  of  love  as  an  art  which  needs  training,  skill, 
and  cultivation,  was  still  extant.  That  conception  was  crushed  by 
Christianity  which,  although  it  sanctified  the  institution  of  matrimony, 
degraded  that  sexual  love  which  is  normally  the  content  of  marriage. 

In  1176  the  question  was  brought  before  a  Court  of  Love  by  a 
baron  and  lady  of  Champagne,  whether  love  is  compatible  with  marriage. 
"No,"  said  the  baron,  "I  admire  and  respect  the  sweet  intimacy  of  mar- 
ried couples,  but  I  cannot  call  it  love.  Love  desires  obstacles,  mystery, 
stolen  favors.     Now  husbands  and  wives  boldly  avow  their  relationship; 


ART    OF    LOVE.  517 

they  possess  each  other  without  contradiction  and  without  reserve.  It 
cannot  then  be  love  that  they  experience."  And  after  mature  delibera- 
tion the  ladies  of  the  Court  of  Love  adopted  the  baron's  conclusions 
(E.  de  la  Bedolliere,  Histoire  des  Mceurs  des  Frangais,  vol.  iii,  p.  334). 
There  was  undoubtedly  an  element  of  truth  in  the  baron's  arguments. 
Yet  it  may  well  be  doubted  whether  in  any  non-Christian  country  it 
would  ever  have  been  possible  to  obtain  acceptance  for  the  doctrine  that 
love  and  marriage  are  incompatible.  This  doctrine  was,  however,  as 
Ribot  points  out  in  his  Logique  des  Sentiments,  inevitable,  when,  as 
among  the  medieval  nobility,  marriage  was  merely  a  political  or 
domestic  treaty  and  could  not,  therefore,  be  a  method  of  moral  elevation. 
"Why  is  it,"  asked  Retif  de  la  Bretonne,  towards  the  end  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  "that  girls  who  have  no  morals  are  more  seductive 
and  more  Ioveable  than  honest  women?  It  is  because,  like  the  Greek 
courtesans  to  whom  grace  and  voluptuousness  were  taught,  they  have 
studied  the  art  of  pleasing.  Among  the  foolish  detractors  of  my  Con- 
temporaines,  not  one  guessed  the  philosophic  aim  of  nearly  everyone  of 
these  tales,  which  is  to  suggest  to  honest  women  the  ways  of  making 
themselves   loved.     I   should  like  to   see   the   institution   of   initiations, 

such  as  those  of  the  ancients To-day  the  happiness  of  the 

human  species  is  abandoned  to  chance;  all  the  experience  of  women  is 
individual,  like  that  of  animals;  it  is  lost  with  those  women  who,  being 
naturally  amiable,  might  have  taught  others  to  become  so.  Prostitutes 
alone  make  a  superficial  study  of  it,  and  the  lessons  they  receive  are,  for 
the  most  part,  as  harmful  as  those  of  respectable  Greek  and  Roman 
matrons  were  holy  and  honorable,  only  tending  to  wantonness,  to  the 
exhaustion  alike  of  the  purse  and  of  the  physical  faculties,  while 
the  aim  of  the  ancient  matrons  was  the  union  of  husband  and  wife 
and  their  mutual  attachment  through  pleasure.  The  Christian  religion 
annihilated  the  Mysteries  as  infamous,  but  we  may  regard  that 
annihilation  as  one  of  the  wrongs  done  by  Christianity  to  humanity,  as 
the  work  of  men  with  little  enlightenment  and  bitter  zeal,  dangerous 
puritans  who  were  the  natural  enemies  of  marriage"  (Retif  de  la 
Bretonne,  Monsieur  Nicolas,  reprint  of  1883,  vol.  x,  pp.  160-3).  It  may 
be  added  that  Duhren  (Dr.  Iwan  Bloch)  regards  Retif  as  "a  master  in 
the  Ars  Amandi,"  and  discusses  him  from  this  point  of  view  in  his 
R6tif  de  la  Bretonne  (pp.  362-371). 

Whether  or  not  Christianity  is  to  be  held  responsible,  it 
cannot  be  doubted  that  throughout  Christendom  there  has  been 
a  lamentable  failure  to  recognize  the  supreme  importance,  not 
only  erotically  but  morally,  of  the  art  of  love.  Even  in  the  great 
revival  of  sexual  enlightenment  now  taking  place  around  us  there 


518  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

is  rarely  even  the  faintest  recognition  that  in  sexual  enlighten- 
ment the  one  thing  essentially  necessary  is  a  knowledge  of  the  art 
of  love.  For  the  most  part,  sexual  instruction  as  at  present 
understood,  is  purely  negative,  a  mere  string  of  thou-shalt-nots. 
If  that  failure  were  due  to  the  conscious  and  deliberate  recogni- 
tion that  while  the  art  of  love  must  be  based  on  physiological  and 
psychological  knowledge,  it  is  far  too  subtle,  too  complex,  too 
personal,  to  be  formulated  in  lectures  and  manuals,  it  would  be 
reasonable  and  sound.  But  it  seems  to  rest  entirely  on  ignorance, 
indifference,  or  worse. 

Love-making  is  indeed,  like  other  arts,  an  art  that  is  partly 
natural — "an  art  that  nature  makes" — and  therefore  it  is  a 
natural  subject  for  learning  and  exercising  in  play.  Children 
left  to  themselves  tend,  both  playfully  and  seriously,  to  practice 
love,  alike  on  the  physical  and  the  psychic  sides.1  But  this  play 
is  on  its  physical  side  sternly  repressed  by  their  elders,  when  dis- 
covered, and  on  its  psychic  side  laughed  at.  Among  the  well- 
bred  classes  it  is  usually  starved  out  at  an  early  age. 

After  puberty,  if  not  before,  there  is  another  form  in  which 
the  art  of  love  is  largely  experimented  and  practised,  especially 
in  England  and  America,  the  form  of  flirtation.  In  its  elemen- 
tary manifestations  flirting  is  entirely  natural  and  normal;  we 
may  trace  it  even  in  animals ;  it  is  simply  the  beginning  of  court- 
ship, at  the  early  stage  when  courtship  may  yet,  if  desired,  be 
broken  off.  Under  modern  civilized  conditions,  however,  flirta- 
tion is  often  more  than  this.  These  conditions  make  marriage 
difficult;  they  make  love  and  its  engagements  too  serious  a 
matter  to  be  entered  on  lightly;  they  make  actual  sexual  inter- 
course dangerous  as  well  as  disreputable.  Flirtation  adapts 
itself  to  these  conditions.  Instead  of  being  merely  the  pre- 
liminary stage  of  normal  courtship,  it  is  developed  into  a  form  of 
sexual  gratification  as  complete  as  due  observation  of  the  condi- 
tions already  mentioned  will  allow.  In  Germany,  and  especially 
in  France  where  it  is  held  in  great  abhorrence,  this  is  the  only 
form  of  flirtation  known;  it  is  regarded  as  an  exportation  from 


1  This  has  already  been  discussed  in  Chapter  II. 


ART    OF    LOVE.  519 

the  United  States  and  is  denominated  "flirtage."  Its  practical 
outcome  is  held  to  be  the  "demi-vierge/'  who  knows  and  has 
experienced  the  joys  of  sex  while  yet  retaining  her  hymen  intact. 

This  degenerate  form  of  flirtation,  cultivated  not  as  a  part  of 
courtship,  but  for  its  own  sake,  has  been  well  described  by  Forel  {Die 
Sexuelle  Frage,  pp.  97-101).  He  defines  it  as  including  "all  those 
expressions  of  the  sexual  instinct  of  one  individual  towards  another 
individual  which  excite  the  other's  sexual  instinct,  coitus  being  always 
excepted."  In  the  beginning  it  may  be  merely  a  provocative  look  or  a 
simple  apparently  unintentional  touch  or  contact ;  and  by  slight  grada- 
tions it  may  pass  on  to  caresses,  kisses,  embraces,  and  even  extend  to 
pressure  or  friction  of  the  sexual  parts,  sometimes  leading  to  orgasm. 
Thus,  Forel  mentions,  a  sensuous  woman  by  the  pressure  of  her  garments 
in  dancing  can  produce  ejaculation  in  her  partner.  Most  usually  the 
process  is  that  voluptuous  contact  and  revery  which,  in  English  slang, 
is  called  "spooning."  From  first  to  last  there  need  not  be  any  explicit 
explanations,  proposals,  or  declarations  on  either  side,  and  neither  party 
is  committed  to  any  relationship  with  the  other  beyond  the  period 
devoted  to  flirtage.  In  one  form,  however,  flirtage  consists  entirely  in 
the  excitement  of  a  conversation  devoted  to  erotic  and  indecorous  topics. 
Either  the  man  or  the  woman  may  take  the  active  part  in  flirtage,  but 
in  a  woman  more  refinement  and  skill  is  required  to  play  the  active  part 
without  repelling  the  man  or  injuring  her  reputation.  Indeed,  much 
the  same  is  true  of  men  also,  for  women,  while  they  often  like  flirting, 
usually  prefer  its  more  refined  forms.  There  are  infinite  forms  of  flirt- 
age, and  while  as  a  preliminary  part  of  courtship,  it  has  its  normal  place 
and  justification,  Forel  concludes  that  "as  an  end  in  itself,  and  never 
passing  beyond  itself,  it  is  a  phenomenon  of  degeneration." 

From  the  French  point  of  view,  flirtage  and  flirtation  generally 
have  been  discussed  by  Madame  Bentzon  ("Family  Life  in  America," 
Forum,  March,  1896)  who,  however,  fails  to  realize  the  natural  basis  of 
flirtation  in  courtship.  She  regards  it  as  a  sin  against  the  law  "Thou 
shalt  not  play  with  love,"  for  it  ought  to  have  the  excuse  of  an  irresisti- 
ble passion,  but  she  thinks  it  is  comparatively  inoffensive  in  America 
(though  still  a  deteriorating  influence  on  the  women)  on  account  of  the 
temperament,  education,  and  habits  of  the  people.  It  must,  however, 
be  remembered  that  play  has  a  proper  relationship  to  all  vital  activities, 
and  that  a  reasonable  criticism  of  flirtation  is  concerned  rather  with  its 
normal  limitations  than  with  its  right  to  exist  (see  the  observations  on 
the  natural  basis  of  coquetry  and  the  ends  it  subserves  in  "The  Evolution 
of  Modesty"  in  volume  i  of  these  Studies). 


520  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

While  flirtation  in  its  natural  form — though  not  in  the  per- 
verted form  of  "flirtage" — has  sound  justification,  alike  as  a 
method  of  testing  a  lover  and  of  acquiring  some  small  part  of 
the  art  of  love,  it  remains  an  altogether  inadequate  preparation 
for  love.  This  is  sufficiently  shown  by  the  frequent  inaptitude 
for  the  art  of  love,  and  even  for  the  mere  physical  act  of  love,  so 
frequently  manifested  both  by  men  and  women  in  the  very 
countries  where  flirtation  most  flourishes. 

This  ignorance,  not  merely  of  the  art  of  love  but  even  of  the 
physical  facts  of  sexual  love,  is  marked  not  only  in  women, 
especially  women  of  the  middle  class,  but  also  in  men,  for  the 
civilized  man,  as  Fritsch  long  ago  remarked,  often  knows  less  of 
the  facts  of  the  sexual  life  than  a  milkmaid.  It  shows  itself 
differently,  however,  in  the  two  sexes. 

Among  women  sexual  ignorance  ranges  from  complete 
innocence  of  the  fact  that  it  involves  any  intimate  bodily  rela- 
tionship at  all  to  misapprehensions  of  the  most  various  kind; 
some  think  that  the  relationship  consists  in  lying  side  by  side, 
many  that  intercourse  takes  place  at  the  navel,  not  a  few  that 
the  act  occupies  the  whole  night.  It  has  been  necessary  in  a 
previous  chapter  to  discuss  the  general  evils  of  sexual  ignorance ; 
it  is  here  necessary  to  refer  to  its  more  special  evils  as  regards 
the  relationship  of  marriage.  Girls  are  educated  with  the  vague 
idea  that  they  will  marry, — quite  correctly,  for  the  majority  of 
them  do  marry, — but  the  idea  that  they  must  be  educated  for 
the  career  that  will  naturally  fall  to  their  lot  is  an  idea  which 
as  yet  has  never  seemed  to  occur  to  the  teachers  of  girls.  Their 
heads  are  crammed  to  stupidity  with  the  knowledge  of  facts  which 
it  is  no  one's  concern  to  know,  but  the  supremely  important  train- 
ing for  life  they  are  totally  unable  to  teach.  Women  are  trained 
for  nearly  every  avocation  under  the  sun;  for  the  supreme 
avocation  of  wifehood  and  motherhood  they  are  never  trained 
at  all ! 

It  may  be  said,  and  with  truth,  that  the  present  incompetent 
training  of  girls  is  likely  to  continue  so  long  as  the  mothers  of 
girls  are  content  to  demand  nothing  better.  It  may  also  be  said, 
with  even  greater  truth,  that,  there  is  much  that  concerns  the 


ART    OF    LOVE.  521 

knowledge  of  sexual  relationships  which  the  mother  herself  may 
most  properly  impart  to  her  daughter.  It  may  further  be 
asserted,  most  unanswerably,  that  the  art  of  love,  with  which  we 
are  here  more  especially  concerned,  can  only  be  learnt  by  actual 
experience,  an  experience  which  our  social  traditions  make  it 
difficult  for  a  virtuous  girl  to  acquire  with  credit.  Without  here 
attempting  to  apportion  the  share  of  blame  which  falls  to  each 
cause,  it  remains  unfortunate  that  a  woman  should  so  often  enter 
marriage  with  the  worst  possible  equipment  of  prejudices  and 
misapprehensions,  even  when  she  believes,  as  often  happens,  that 
she  knows  all  about  it.  Even  with  the  best  equipment,  a  woman, 
under  present  conditions,  enters  marriage  at  a  disadvantage. 
She  awakes  to  the  full  realization  of  love  more  slowly  than  a 
man,  and,  on  the  average,  at  a  later  age,  so  that  her  experiences  of 
the  life  of  sex  before  marriage  have  usually  been  of  a  much  more 
restricted  kind  than  her  husband's.1  So  that  even  with  the  best 
preparation,  it  often  happens  that  it  is  not  until  several  years 
after  marriage  that  a  woman  clearly  realizes  her  own  sexual  needs 
and  adequately  estimates  her  husband's  ability  to  satisfy  those 
needs.  We  cannot  over-estimate  the  personal  and  social  impor- 
tance of  a  complete  preparation  for  marriage,  and  the  greater 
the  difficulties  placed  in  the  way  of  divorce  the  more  weight 
necessarily  attaches  to  that  preparation.2 

Everyone  is  probably  acquainted  with  many  eases  of  the  extreme 
ignorance  of  women  on  entering  marriage.  The  following  case  concern- 
ing a  woman  of  twenty-seven,  who  had  been  asked  in  marriage,  is  some- 
what extreme,  but  not  very  exceptional.  "She  did  not  feel  sure  of  her 
affection  and  she  asked  a  woman  cousin  concerning  the  meaning  of  love. 
This  cousin  lent  her  Ellis  Ethelmer's  pamphlet,  The  Human  Flower. 
She  learnt  from  this  that  men  desired  the  body  of  a  woman,  and  this 


1  By  the  age  of  twenty- five,  as  G.  Hirth  remarks  ( Wege  zur  Heimati, 
p.  541),  an  energetic  and  sexually  disposed  man  in  a  large  city  has,  for 
the  most  part,  already  had  relations  with  some  twenty-five  women,  per- 
haps even  as  many  as  fifty,  while  a  well-bred  and  cultivated  woman  at 
that  age  is  still  only  beginning  to  realize  the  slowly  summating  excita- 
tions of  sex. 

2  In  his  study  of  "Conjugal  Aversion"  (Journal  Nervous  and 
Mental  Disease,  Sept.,  1892)  Smith  Baker  points  out  the  value  of 
adequate  sexual  knowledge  before  marriage  in  lessening  the  risks  of  such 
aversion. 


522  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

so  appalled  her  that  she  was  quite  ill  for  several  days.  The  next  time 
her  lover  attempted  a  caress  she  told  him  that  it  was  'lust.'  Since  then 
she  has  read  George  Moore's  Sister  Teresa,  and  the  knowledge  that 
'women  can  be  as  bad  as  men'  has  made  her  sad."  The  "Histories" 
contained  in  the  Appendices  to  previous  volumes  of  these  Studies  reveal 
numerous  instances  of  the  deplorable  ignorance  of  young  girls  concern- 
ing the  most  central  facts  of  the  sexual  life.  It  is  not  surprising,  under 
such  circumstances,  that  marriage  leads  to  disillusionment  or  repulsion. 
It  is  commonly  said  that  the  duty  of  initiating  the  wife  into  the 
privileges  and  obligations  of  marriage  properly  belongs  to  the  husband. 
Apart,  however,  altogether  from  the  fact  that  it  is  unjust  to  a  woman 
to  compel  her  to  bind  herself  in  marriage  before  she  has  fully  realized 
what  marriage  means,  it  must  also  be  said  that  there  are  many  things 
necessary  for  women  to  know  that  it  is  unreasonable  to  expect  a  husband 
to  explain.  This  is,  for  instance,  notably  the  case  as  regards  the  more 
fatiguing  and  exhausting  effects  of  coitus  on  a  man  as  compared  with 
a  woman.  The  inexperienced  bride  cannot  know  beforehand  that  the 
frequently  repeated  orgasms  which  render  her  vigorous  and  radiant  exert 
a  depressing  effect  on  her  husband,  and  his  masculine  pride  induces  him 
to  attempt  to  conceal  that  fact.  The  bride,  in  her  innocence,  is  uncon- 
scious that  her  pleasure  is  bought  at  her  husband's  expense,  and  that 
what  is  not  excess  to  her,  may  be  a  serious  excess  to  him.  The  woman 
who  knows  (notably,  for  instance,  a  widow  who  remarries)  is  careful  to 
guard  her  husband's  health  in  this  respect,  by  restraining  her  own 
ardor,  for  she  realizes  that  a  man  is  not  willing  to  admit  that  he  is 
incapable  of  satisfying  his  wife's  desires.  (G.  Hirth  has  also  pointed 
out  how  important  it  is  that  women  should  know  before  marriage  the 
natural  limits  of  masculine  potency,  Wege  sur  Liehe,  p.  571.) 

The  ignorance  of  women  of  all  that  concerns  the  art  of  love, 
and  their  total  lack  of  preparation  for  the  natural  facts  of  the 
sexual  life,  would  perhaps  be  of  less  evil  augury  for  marriage  if 
it  were  always  compensated  by  the  knowledge,  skill,  and  con- 
siderateness  of  the  husband.  But  that  is  by  no  means  always  the 
case.  Within  the  ordinary  range  we  find,  at  all  events  in 
England,  the  large  group  of  men  whose  knowledge  of  women 
before  marriage  has  been  mainly  confined  to  prostitutes,  and  the 
important  and  not  inconsiderable  group  of  men  who  have  had  no 
intimate  intercourse  with  women,  their  sexual  experiences  having 
been  confined  to  masturbation  or  other  auto-erotic  manifesta- 
tions, and  to  flirtation.  Certainly  the  man  of  sensitive  and 
intelligent  temperament,  whatever  his  training  or  lack  of  train- 


ART    OF    LOVE.  523 

ing,  may  succeed  with  patience  and  consideration  in  overcoming 
all  the  difficulties  placed  in  the  way  of  love  by  the  mixture  of 
ignorances  and  prejudices  which  so  often  in  woman  takes  the 
place  of  an  education  for  the  erotic  part  of  her  life.  But  it  can- 
not be  said  that  either  of  these  two  groups  of  men  has  been  well 
equipped  for  the  task.  The  training  and  experience  which  a  man 
receives  from  a  prostitute,  even  under  fairly  favorable  conditions, 
scarcely  form  the  right  preparation  for  approaching  a  woman  of 
his  own  class  who  has  no  intimate  erotic  experiences.1  The 
frequent  result  is  that  he  is  liable  to  waver  between  two  opposite 
courses  of  action,  both  of  them  mistaken.  On  the  one  hand,  he 
may  treat  his  bride  as  a  prostitute,  or  as  a  novice  to  be  speedily 
moulded  into  the  sexual  shape  he  is  most  accustomed  to,  thus 
running  the  risk  either  of  perverting  or  of  disgusting  her.  On 
the  other  hand,  realizing  that  the  purity  and  dignity  of  his  bride 
place  her  in  an  altogether  different  class  from  the  women  he  has 
previously  known,  he  may  go  to  the  opposite  extreme  of  treating 
her  with  an  exaggerated  respect,  and  so  fail  either  to  arouse  or 
to  gratify  her  erotic  needs.  It  is  difficult  to  say  which  of  these 
two  courses  of  action  is  the  more  unfortunate ;  the  result  of  both, 
however,  is  frequently  found  to  be  that  a  nominal  marriage 
never  becomes  a  real  marriage.2 

i  "It  may  be  said  to  the  honor  of  men."  Adler  truly  remarks  (op. 
cit.,  p.  182),  "that  it  is  perhaps  not  often  their  conscious  brutality  that 
is  at  fault  in  this  matter,  but  merely  lack  of  skill  and  lack  of  under- 
standing. The  husband  who  is  not  specially  endowed  by  nature  and 
experience  for  psychic  intercourse  with  women,  is  not  likely,  through  his 
earlier  intercourse  with  Venus  vulgivaga,  to  bring  into  marriage  any 
useful  knowledge,  psychic  or  physical." 

2  "The  first  night."  writes  a  correspondent  concerning  his  mar- 
riage, "she  found  the  act  very  painful  and  was  frightened  and  surprised 
at  the  size  of  jny  penis,  and  at  my  suddenly  getting  on  her.  We  had 
talked  very  openly  about  sex  things  before  marriage,  and  it  never 
occurred  to  me  that  she  was  ignorant  of  the  details  of  the  act.  I 
imagined  it  would  disgust  her  to  talk  about  these  things;  but  I  now 
see  I  should  have  explained  things  to  her.  Before  marrying  I  had  come 
to  the  conclusion  that  the  respect  owed  to  one's  wife  was  incompatible 
with  any  talk  that  might  seem  indecent,  and  also  I  had  made  a  resolve 
not  to  subject  her  to  what  I  thought  then  were  dirty  tricks,  even  to  be 
naked  and  to  have  her  naked.  In  fact,  I  was  the  victim  of  mock  mod- 
esty; it  was  an  artificial  reaction  from  the  life  I  had  been  living  before 
marriage.  Now  it  seems  to  me  to  be  natural,  if  you  love  a  woman,  to 
do  whatever  occurs  to  you  and  to  her.  If  I  had  not  felt  it  wrong  to 
encourage  such  acts  between  us,  there  might  have  been  established  a 
sexual  sympathy  which  would  have  bound  me  more  closely  to  her." 


524  PSYCHOLOGY    OP    SEX. 

Yet  there  can  be  no  doubt  whatever  that  the  other  group  of 
men,  the  men  who  enter  marriage  without  any  erotic  experiences, 
run  even  greater  risks.  These  are  often  the  best  of  men,  both  as 
regards  personal  character  and  mental  power.  It  is  indeed 
astonishing  to  find  how  ignorant,  both  practically  and  theoret- 
ically, very  able  and  highly  educated  men  may  be  concerning 
sexual  matters. 

"Complete  abstinence  during  youth,"  says  Freud  (Sexual-Probleme, 
March,  1908),  "is  not  the  best  preparation  for  marriage  in  a  young  man. 
Women  divine  this  and  prefer  those  of  their  wooers  who  have  already 
proved  themselves  to  be  men  with  other  women."  Ellen  Key,  referring 
to  the  demand  sometimes  made  by  women  for  purity  in  men  (TJeber 
Liebe  und  Ehe,  p.  96),  asks  whether  women  realize  the  effect  of  their 
admiration  of  the  experienced  and  confident  man  who  knows  women,  on 
the  shy  and  hesitating  youth,  "who  perhaps  has  been  struggling  hard 
for  his  erotic  purity,  in  the  hope  that  a  woman's  happy  smile  will  be 
the  reward  of  his  conquest,  and  who  is  condemned  to  see  how  that  woman 
looks  down  on  him  with  lofty  compassion  and  gazes  with  admiration  at 
the  leopard's  spots."  When  the  lover,  in  Laura  Marholm's  Was  war  es? 
says  to  the  heroine,  "I  have  never  yet  touched  a  woman,"  the  girl  "turns 
from  him  with  horror,  and  it  seemed  to  her  that  a  cold  shudder  went 
through  her,  a  chilling  deception."  The  same  feeling  is  manifested  in 
an  exaggerated  form  in  the  passion  often  experienced  by  vigorous  girls 
of  eighteen  to  twent3^-four  for  old  roues.  (This  has  been  discussed  by 
Forel,  Die  Sexuelle  Frage,  pp.  217  et  seq.) 

Other  factors  may  enter  in  a  woman's  preference  for  the  man  who 
has  conquered  other  women.  Even  the  most  religious  and  moral  young 
woman,  Valera  remarks  {Dona  Luz,  p.  205),  likes  to  marry  a  man  who 
has  loved  many  women;  it  gives  a  greater  value  to  his  choice  of  her; 
it  also  offers  her  an  opportunity  of  converting  him  to  higher  ideals.  No 
doubt  when  the  inexperienced  man  meets  in  marriage  the  equally  inex- 
perienced woman  they  often  succeed  in  adapting  themselves  to  each  other 
and  a  permanent  modus  vivendi  is  constituted.  But  it  is  by  no  means 
so  always.  If  the  wife  is  taught  by  instinct  or  experience  she  is  apt  to 
resent  the  awkwardness  <and  helplessness  of  her  husband  in  the  art  of 
love.  Even  if  she  is  ignorant  she  may  be  permanently  alienated  and 
become  chronically  frigid,  through  the  brutal  inconsiderateness  of  her 
ignorant  husband  in  carrying  out  what  he  conceives  to  be  his  marital 
duties.  (It  has  already  been  necessary  to  touch  on  this  point  in  dis- 
cussing "The  Sexual  Impulse  in  Women"  in  vol.  iii  of  these  Studies.) 
Sometimes,  indeed,  serious  physical  injury  has  been  inflicted  on  the 
bride  owing  to  this  ignorance  of  the  husband. 


ART    OF    LOVE.  525 

"I  take  it  that  most  men  have  had  pre-matrimonial  sex-relation- 
ships," a  correspondent  writes.  "But  I  have  known  one  man  at  least 
who,  up  till  the  age  of  twenty,  had  not  even  a  rudimentary  idea  of  sex 
matters.  At  twenty-nine,  a  few  months  before  marriage,  he  came  to  ask 
me  how  coitus  was  performed,  and  displayed  an  ignorance  that  I  could 
not  believe  to  exist  in  the  mind  of  an  otherwise  intelligent  man.  He 
had  evidently  no  instinct  to  guide  him,  as  the  brutes  have,  and  his  rea- 
son was  unable  to  supply  the  necessary  knowledge.  It  is  very  curio\is 
that  man  should  lose  this  instinctive  knowledge.  I  have  known  another 
man  almost  equally  ignorant.  He  also  came  to  me  for  advice  in  marital 
duties.  Both  of  these  men  masturbated,  and  they  were  normally  pas- 
sionate." Such  cases  are  not  so  very  rare.  Usually,  however,  a  certain 
amount  of  information  has  been  acquired  from  some  for  the  most  part 
unsatisfactory  source,  and  the  ignorance  is  only  partial,  though  not  on 
that  account  less  dangerous. 

Balzac  has  compared  the  average  husband  to  an  orang-utan 
trying  to  play  the  violin.  "Love,  as  we  instinctively  feel,  is  the  most 
melodious  of  harmonies.  Woman  is  a  delicious  instrument  of  pleasure, 
but  it  is  necessary  to  know  its  quivering  strings,  study  the  pose  of  it, 
its  timid  keyboard,  the  changing  and  capricious  fingering.  How  many 
orangs — men,  I  mean,  marry  without  knowing  what  a  woman  is! 
.  .  .  .  Nearly  all  men  marry  in  the  most  profound  ignorance  of 
women  and  of  love"   (Balzac,  Physiologie  du  Manage,  Meditation  VII). 

Neugebauer  (Monatsschrift  fur  Geburtshiilfe,  1889,  Bk.  ix,  pp.  221 
et  seq.)  has  collected  over  one  hundred  and  fifty  cases  of  injury  to 
women  in  coitus  inflicted  by  the  penis.  The  causes  were  brutality, 
drunkenness  of  one  or  both  parties,  unusual  position  in  coitus,  dispro- 
portion of  the  organs,  pathological  conditions  of  the  woman's  organs 
(Cf.  R.  W.  Taylor,  Practical  Treatise  on  Sexual  Disorders,  Ch.  XXXV). 
Blumreich  also  discusses  the  injuries  produced  by  violent  coitus  ( Senator 
and  Kaminer,  Health  and  Disease  in  Relation  to  Marriage,  vol.  ii,  pp. 
770-779).  C.  M.  Green  (Boston  Medical  and  Surgical  Journal,  13  Ap., 
1893)  records  two  cases  of  rupture  of  vagina  by  sexual  intercourse  in 
newly-married  ladies,  without  evidence  of  any  great  violence.  Mylott 
(British  Medical  Journal,  Sept.  16,  1899)  records  a  similar  ease  occur- 
ring on  the  wedding  night.  The  amount  of  force  sometimes  exerted  in 
coitus  is  evidenced  by  the  cases,  occurring  from  time  to  time,  in  which 
intercourse  takes  place  by  the  urethra. 

Eulenburg  finds  (Sexuale  Neuropathie,  p.  69)  that  vaginismus,  a 
condition  of  spasmodic  contraction  of  the  vulva  and  exaggerated  sensi- 
bility on  the  attempt  to  effect  coitus,  is  due  to  forcible  and  unskilful 
attempts  at  the  first  coitus.  Adler  (Die  Mangelhafte  Geschlechtsemp- 
findung  des  Weibes,  p.  160)  also  believes  that  the  scarred  remains  of  the 
hymen,  together  with  painful  memories  of  a  violent  first  coitus,  are  the 
most  frequent  cause  of  vaginismus. 


526  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

The  occasional  cases,  however,  of  physical  injury  or  of  pathological 
condition  produced  by  violent  coitus  at  the  beginning  of  marriage  con- 
stitute but  a  very  small  portion  of  the  evidence  which  witnesses  to  the 
evil  results  of  the  prevalent  ignorance  regarding  the  art  of  love.  As 
regards  Germany,  Fiirbringer  writes  (Senator  and  Kaminer,  Health  and 
Disease  in  Relation  to  Marriage,  vol.  i,  p.  215)  :  "I  am  perfectly  satis- 
fied that  the  number  of  young  married  women  who  have  a  lasting  painful 
recollection  of  their  first  sexual  intercourse  exceeds  by  far  the  number 
of  those  who  venture  to  consult  a  doctor."  As  regards  England,  the  fol- 
lowing experience  is  instructive:  A  lady  asked  six  married  women  in 
succession,  privately,  on  the  same  day  concerning  their  bridal  experi- 
ences. To  all,  sexual  intercourse  had  come  as  a  shock;  two  had  been 
absolutely  ignorant  about  sexual  matters;  the  others  had  thought  they 
knew  what  coitus  was,  but  were  none  the  less  shocked.  These  women 
were  of  the  middle  class,  perhaps  above  the  average  in  intelligence;  one 
was  a  doctor. 

Breuer  and  Freud,  in  their  Studien  iioer  Hysteric  (p.  216),  pointed 
out  that  the  bridal  night  is  practically  often  a  rape,  and  that  it  some- 
times leads  to  hysteria,  which  is  not  cured  until  satisfying  sexual  rela- 
tionships are  established.  Even  when  there  is  no  violence,  Kisch  (Sexual 
Life  of  Woman,  Part  II)  regards  awkward  and  inexperienced  coitus, 
leading  to  incomplete  excitement  of  the  wife,  as  the  chief  cause  of 
dyspareunia,  or  absence  of  sexual  gratification,  although  gross  dispro- 
portion in  the  size  of  the  male  and  female  organs,  or  disease  in  either 
party,  may  lead  to  the  same  result.  Dyspareunia,  Kisch  adds,  is  aston- 
ishingly frequent,  though  sometimes  women  complain  of  it  without 
justification  in  order  to  arouse  sympathy  for  themselves  as  sacrifices  on 
the  altar  of  marriage;  the  constant  sign  is  absence  of  ejaculation  on 
the  woman's  part.  Kisch  also  observes  that  wedding  night  deflorations 
are  often  really  rapes.  One  young  bride,  known  to  him,  was  so  ignorant 
of  the  physical  side  of  love,  and  so  overwhelmed  by  her  husband's  first 
attempt  at  intercourse,  that  she  fled  from  the  house  in  the  night,  and 
nothing  would  ever  persuade  her  to  return  to  her  husband.  (It  is  worth 
noting  that  by  Canon  law,  under  such  circumstances,  the  Church  might 
hold  the  marriage  invalid.  See  Thomas  Slater's  Moral  Theology,  vol.  ii, 
p.  318,  and  a  case  in  point,  both  quoted  by  Rev.  C.  J.  Shebbcare,  "Mar- 
riage Law  in  the  Church  of  England,"  Nineteenth  Century,  Aug.,  1909, 
p.  263.)  Kisch  considers,  also,  that  wedding  tours  are  a  mistake;  since 
the  fatigue,  the  excitement,  the  long  journeys,  sight-seeing,  false  modesty, 
bad  hotel  arrangements,  often  combine  to  affect  the  bride  unfavorably 
and  produce  the  germs  of  serious  illness.     This  is  undoubtedly  the  case. 

The  extreme  psychic  importance  of  the  manner  in  which  the  act  of 
defloration  is  accomplished  is  strongly  emphasized  by  Adler.  He  regards 
it  as  a   frequent   cause   of   permanent   sexual  anaesthesia.     "This   first 


ART    OF    LOVE.  527 

moment  in  which  the  man's  individuality  attains  its  full  rights  often 
decides  the  whole  of  life.  The  unskilled,  over-excited  husband  can  then 
implant  the  seed  of  feminine  insensibility,  and  by  continued  awkward- 
ness and  coarseness  develop  it  into  permanent  anaesthesia.  The  man  who 
takes  possession  of  his  rights  with  reckless  brutal  masculine  force  merely 
causes  his  wife  anxiety  and  pain,  and  with  every  repetition  of  the  act 

increases  her  repulsion A  large  proportion  of  cold-natured 

women  represent  a  sacrifice  by  men,  due  either  to  unconscious  awkward- 
ness, or,  occasionally,  to  conscious  brutality  towards  the  tender  plant 
which  should  have  been  cherished  with  peculiar  art  and  love,  but  has 
been  robbed  of  the  splendor  of  its  development.  All  her  life  long,  a  wist- 
ful and  trembling  woman  will  preserve  the  recollection  of  a  brutal  wed- 
ding night,  and,  often  enough,  it  remains  a  perpetual  source  of  inhibition 
every  time  that  the  husband  seeks  anew  to  gratify  his  desires  without 
adapting  himself  to  his  wife's  desires  for  love  (O.  Adler,  Die  Mangelhafte 
Geschlechtsempfindung  des  Weibes,  pp.  159  et  seq.,  181  et  seq).  "I  have 
seen  an  honest  woman  shudder  with  horror  at  her  husband's  approach," 
wrote  Diderot  long  ago  in  his  essay  "Sur  les  Femmes" ;  "I  have  seen  her 
plunge  in  the  bath  and  feel  herself  never  sufficiently  washed  from  the 
stain  of  duty."  The  same  may  still  be  said  of  a  vast  army  of  women, 
victims  of  a  pernicious  system  of  morality  which  has  taught  them  false 
ideas  of  "conjugal  duty"  and  has  failed  to  teach  their  husbands  the  art 
of  love. 

Women,  when  their  fine  natural  instincts  have  not  been 
hopelessly  perverted  by  the  pruderies  and  prejudices  which  are  so 
diligently  instilled  into  them,  understand  the  art  of  love  more 
readily  than  men.  Even  when  little  more  than  children  they  can 
often  completely  take  the  cue  that  is  given  to  them.  Much 
more  than  is  the  case  with  men,  at  all  events  under  civilized  con- 
ditions, the  art  of  love  is  with  them  an  art  that  Nature  makes. 
They  always  know  more  of  love,  as  Montaigne  long  since  said, 
than  men  can  teach  them,  for  it  is  a  discipline  that  is  born  in 
their  blood.1 


i  Montaigne,  Essais,  Bk.  iii,  Ch.  V.  It  is  a  significant  fact  that, 
even  in  the  matter  of  information,  women,  notwithstanding  much  igno- 
rance and  inexperience,  are  often  better  eqtiipped  for  marriage  than  men. 
As  Fiirbringer  remarks  (Senator  and  Kaminer,  Health  and  Disease  in 
Relation  to  Marriage,  vol.  i,  p.  212),  although  the  wife  is  usually  more 
chaste  at  marriage  than  the  husband,  yet  "she  is  generally  the  better 
informed  partner  in  matters  pertaining  to  the  married  state,  in  spite  of 
occasional  astonishing  confessions." 


528  PSYCHOLOGY    OP    SEX. 

The  extensive  inquiries  of  Sanford  Bell  (loc.  cit)  show  that  the 
emotions  of  sex-love  may  appear  as  early  as  the  third  year.  It  must 
also  be  remembered  that,  both  physically  and  psychically,  girls  are  more 
precocious,  more  mature,  than  boys  (see,  e.g.,  Havelock  Ellis,  Man  and 
Woman,  fourth  edition,  pp.  34  et  seq.,  200,  etc.).  Thus,  by  the  time  she 
has  reached  the  age  of  puberty  a  girl  has  had  time  to  become  an  accom- 
plished mistress  of  the  minor  arts  of  love.  That  the  age  of  puberty  is 
for  girls  the  age  of  love  seems  to  be  widely  recognized  by  the  popular 
mind.    Thus  in  a  popular  song  of  Bresse  a  girl  sings: — 

"J'ai  calcule  mon  age, 
J'ai  quatorze  a  quinze  ans. 
Ne  suis-je  pas  dans  l'age 
D'y  avoir  un  amant?" 

This  matter  of  the  sexual  precocity  of  girls  has  an  important  bear- 
ing on  the  question  of  the  "age  of  consent,"  or  the  age  at  which  it  should 
be  legal  for  a  girl  to  consent  to  sexual  intercourse.  Until  within  the 
last  twenty-five  years  there  has  been  a  tendency  to  set  a  very  low  age 
(even  as  low  as  ten)  as  the  age  above  which  a  man  commits  no  offence 
in  having  sexual  intercourse  with  a  girl.  In  recent  years  there  has  keen 
a  tendency  to  run  to  the  opposite  and  equally  unfortunate  extreme  of 
raising  it  to  a  very  late  age.  In  England,  by  the  Criminal  Law  Amend- 
ment Act  of  1885,  the  age  of  consent  was  raised  to  sixteen  (this  clause 
of  the  bill  being  carried  in  the  House  of  Commons  by  a  majority  of  108). 
This  seems  to  be  the  reasonable  age  at  which  the  limit  should  be  set 
and  its  extreme  high  limit  in  temperate  climates.  It  is  the  age  recog- 
nized by  the  Italian  Criminal  Code,  and  in  many  other  parts  of  the 
civilized  world.  Gladstone,  however,  was  in  favor  of  raising  it  to 
eighteen,  and  Howard,  in  discussing  this  question  as  regards  the  United 
States  {Matrimonial  Institutions,  vol.  iii,  pp.  195-203),  thinks  it  ought 
everywhere  to  be  raised  to  twenty-one,  so  coinciding  with  the  age  of  legal 
majority  at  which  a  woman  can  enter  into  business  or  political  relations. 
There  has  been,  during  recent  years,  a  wide  limit  of  variation  in  the 
legislation  of  the  different  American  States  on  this  point,  the  differences 
of  the  two  limits  being  as  much  as  eight  years,  and  in  some  important 
States  the  act  of  intercourse  with  a  girl  under  eighteen  is  declared  to 
be  "rape,"  and  punishable  with  imprisonment  for  life. 

Such  enactments  as  these,  however,  it  must  be  recognized,  are 
arbitrary,  artificial,  and  unnatural.  They  do  not  rest  on  a  sound 
biological  basis,  and  cannot  be  enforced  by  the  common  sense  of  the  com- 
munity. There  is  no  proper  analogy  between  the  age  of  legal  majority 
which  is  fixed,  approximately,  with  reference  to  the  ability  to  comprehend 
abstract  matters  of  intelligence,  and  the  age  of  sexual  maturity  which 
occurs  much  earlier,  both  physically  and  psychically,  and  is  determined  in 


i-ET    OF    LOVE.  529 

women  by  a  very  precise  biological  event:  the  completion  of  puberty  in 
the  onset  of  menstruation.  Among  peoples  living  under  natural  condi- 
tions in  all  parts  of  the  world  it  is  recognized  that  a  girl  becomes 
sexually  a  woman  at  puberty;  at  that  epoch  she  receives  her  initiation 
into  adult  life  and  becomes  a  wife  and  a  mother.  To  declare  that  the 
act  of  intercourse  with  a  woman  who,  by  the  natural  instinct  of  man- 
kind generally,  is  regarded  as  old  enough  for  all  the  duties  of  woman- 
hood, is  a  criminal  act  of  rape,  punishable  by  imprisonment  for  life,  can 
only  be  considered  an  abuse  of  language,  and,  what  is  worse,  an  abuse  of 
law,  even  if  we  leave  all  psychological  and  moral  considerations  out  of 
the  question,  for  it  deprives  the  conception  of  rape  of  all  that  renders  it 
naturally  and  properly  revolting. 

The  sound  view  in  this  question  is  clearly  the  view  that  it  is  the 
girl's  puberty  which  constitutes  the  criterion  of  the  man's  criminality 
in  sexually  approaching  her.  In  the  temperate  regions  of  Europe  and 
North  America  the  average  age  of  the  appearance  of  menstruation,  the 
critical  moment  in  the  establishment  of  complete  puberty,  is  fifteen  (see, 
e.g.„  Havelock  Ellis,  Man  and  Woman,  Ch.  XI ;  the  facts  are  set  forth  at 
length  in  Kisch's  Sexual  Life  of  Woman,  1909).  Therefore  it  is  reason- 
able that  the  act  of  an  adult  man  in  having  sexual  connection  with  a 
girl  under  sixteen,  with  or  without  her  consent,  should  properly  be  a 
criminal  act,  severely  punishable.  In  those  lands  where  the  average  age 
of  puberty  is  higher  or  lower,  the  age  of  consent  should  be  raised  or 
lowered  accordingly.  (Bruno  Meyer,  arguing  against  any  attempt  to 
raise  the  age  of  consent  above  sixteen,  considers  that  the  proper  age 
of  consent  is  generally  fourteen,  for,  as  he  rightly  insists,  the  line  of 
division  is  between  the  ripe  and  the  unripe  personality,  and  while  the 
latter  should  be  strictly  preserved  from  the  sphere  of  sexuality,  only 
voluntary,  not  compulsory,  influence  should  be  brought  to  bear  on  the 
former.     Sexual-Probleme,  Ap.,  1909.) 

If  we  take  into  our  view  the  wider  considerations  of  psychology, 
morality,  and  law,  we  shall  find  ample  justification  for  this  point  of  view. 
We  have  to  remember  that  a  girl,  during  all  the  years  of  ordinary  school 
life,  is  always  more  advanced,  both  physically  and  psychically,  than  a 
boy  of  the  same  age,  and  we  have  to  recognize  that  this  precocity  covers 
her  sexual  development ;  for  even  though  it  is  true,  on  the  average,  that 
active  sexual  desire  is  not  usually  aroused  in  women  until  a  somewhat 
later  age,  there  is  also  truth  in  the  observation  of  Mr.  Thomas  Hardy 
( New  Review,  June,  1 894 )  :  "It  has  never  struck  me  that  the  spider  is 
invariably  male  and  the  fly  invariably  female."  Even,  therefore,  when 
sexual  intercourse  takes  place  between  a  girl  and  a  youth  somewhat 
older  than  herself,  she  is  likely  to  be  the  more  mature,  the  more  self- 
possessed,  and  the  more  responsible  of  the  two,  and  often  the  one  who 
has  taken  the  more  active  part  in  initiating  the  act.     (This  point  has 


530  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

been  discussed  in  "The  Sexual  Impulse  in  Women"  in  vol.  iii  of  these 
Studies. )  It  must  also  be  remembered  that  when  a  girl  has  once  reached 
the  age  of  puberty,  and  put  on  all  the  manner  and  habits  as  well  as  the 
physical  development  of  a  woman,  it  is  no  longer  possible  for  a  man 
always  to  estimate  her  age.  It  is  easy  to  see  that  a  girl  has  not  yet 
reached  the  age  of  puberty;  it  is  impossible  to  tell  whether  a  mature 
woman  is  under  or  over  eighteen;  it  is  therefore,  to  say  the  least,  unjust 
to  make  her  male  partner's  fate  for  life  depend  on  the  recognition  of  a 
distinction  which  has  no  basis  in  nature.  Such  considerations  are, 
indeed,  so  obvious  that  there  is  no  chance  of  carrying  out  thoroughly  in 
practice  the  doctrine  that  a  man  should  be  imprisoned  for  life  for  having 
intercourse  with  a  girl  who  is  over  the  age  of  sixteen.  It  is  better,  from 
the  legal  point  of  view,  to  cast  the  net  less  widely  and  to  be  quite  sure 
that  it  is  adapted  to  catch  the  real  and  conscious  offender,  who  may  be 
punished  without  offending  the  common  sense  of  the  community.  (Cf. 
Bloch,  The  Sexual  life  of  Our  Time],  Ch.  XXIV;  he  considers  that  the 
"age  of  consent"  should  begin  with  the  completion  of  the  sixteenth  year. ) 
It  may  be  necessary  to  add  that  the  establishment  of  the  "age  of 
consent"  on  this  basis  by  no  means  implies  that  intercourse  with  girls 
but  little  over  sixteen  should  be  encouraged,  or  even  socially  and  morally 
tolerated.  Here,  however,  we  are  not  in  the  sphere  of  law.  It  is  the 
natural  tendency  of  the  well-born  and  well-nurtured  girl  under  civilized 
conditions  to  hold  herself  in  reserve,  and  the  pressure  whereby  that  tend- 
ency is  maintained  and  furthered  must  be  supplied  by  the  whole  of  her 
environment,  primarily  by  the  intelligent  reflection  of  the  girl  herself 
when  she  has  reached  the  age  of  adolescence.  To  foster  in  a  young 
woman  who  has  long  passed  the  epoch  of  puberty  the  notion  that  she  has 
no  responsibility  in  the  guardianship  of  her  own  body  and  soul  is  out 
of  harmony  with  modern  feeling,  as  well  as  unfavorable  to  the  training 
of  women  for  the  world.  The  States  which  have  been  induced  to  adopt 
the  high  limit  of  the  age  of  consent  have,  indeed,  thereby  made  an  abject 
confession  of  their  inability  to  maintain  a  decent  moral  level  by  more 
legitimate  means;  they  may  profitably  serve  as  a  warning  rather  than 
as  an  example. 

The  knowledge  of  women  cannot,  however,  replace,  the 
ignorance  of  men,  but,  on  the  contrary,  merely  serves  to  reveal  it. 
For  in  the  art  of  love  the  man  must  necessarily  take  the  initiative. 
It  is  he  who  must  first  unseal  the  mystery  of  the  intimacies  and 
audacities  which  the  woman's  heart  may  hold.  The  risk  of  meet- 
ing with  even  the  shadow  of  contempt  or  disgust  is  too  serious 
to  allow  a  woman,  even  a  wife,  to  reveal  the  secrets  of  love  to  a 


ART    OP    LOVE.  531 

man  who  has  not  shown  himself  to  be  an  initiate.1  Numberless 
are  the  jovial  and  contented  husbands  who  have  never  suspected, 
and  will  never  know,  that  their  wives  carry  about  with  them, 
sometimes  with  silent  resentment,  the  ache  of  mysterious  tabus. 
The  feeling  that  there  are  delicious  privacies  and  privileges  which 
she  has  never  been  asked  to  take,  or  forced  to  accept,  often 
erotically  divorces  a  wife  from  a  husband  who  never  realizes  what 
he  has  missed.2  The  case  of  such  husbands  is  all  the  harder 
because,  for  the  most  part,  all  that  they  have  done  is  the  result 
of  the  morality  that  has  been  preached  to  them.  They  have  been 
taught  from  boyhood  to  be  strenuous  and  manly  and  clean- 
minded,  to  seek  by  all  means  to  put  out  of  their  minds  the 
thought  of  women  or  the  longing  for  sensuous  indulgence.  They 
have  been  told  on  all  sides  that  only  in  marriage  is  it  right  or 
even  safe  to  approach  women.  They  have  acquired  the  notion 
that  sexual  indulgence  and  all  that  appertains  to  it  is  something 
low  and  degrading,  at  the  worst  a  mere  natural  necessity,  at  the 
best  a  duty  to  be  accomplished  in  a  direct,  honorable  and  straight- 
forward manner.  No  one  seems  to  have  told  them  that  love  is  an 
art,  and  that  to  gain  real  possession  of  a  woman's  soul  and  body 
is  a  task  that  requires  the  whole  of  a  man's  best  skill  and  insight. 
It  may  well  be  that  when  a  man  learns  his  lesson  too  late  he  is 
inclined  to  turn  ferociously  on  the  society  that  by  its  conspiracy 
of  pseudo-morality  has  done  its  best  to  ruin  his  life,  and  that  of 
his  wife.     In  some  of  these  cases  husband  or  wife  or  both  are 


1  "She  never  loses  her  self-respect  nor  my  respect  for  her,"  a  man 
writes  in  a  letter,  "simply  because  we  are  desperately  in  love  with  one 
another,  and  everything  we  do — some  of  which  the  lowest  prostitute  might 
refuse  to  do — seems  but  one  attempt  after  another  to  translate  our  pas- 
sion into  action.  I  never  realized  before,  not  that  to  the  pure  all  things 
are  pure,  indeed,  but  that  to  the  lover  nothing  is  indecent.  Yes,  I  have 
always  felt  it,  to  love  her  is  a  liberal  education."  It  is  obviously  only 
the  existence  of  such  an  attitude  as  this  that  can  enable  a  pure  woman 
to  be  passionate. 

2  "To  be  really  understood,"  as  Rafford  Pyke  well  says,  "to  say 
what  she  likes,  to  utter  her  innermost  thoughts  in  her  own  way,  to  cast 
aside  the  traditional  conventions  that  gall  her  and  repress  her,  to  have 
someone  near  her  with  whom  she  can  be  quite  frank,  and  yet  to  know 
that  not  a  syllable  of  what  she  says  will  be  misinterpreted  or  mistaken, 
but  rather  felt  just  as  she  feels  it  all — how  wonderfully  sweet  is  this  to 
every  woman,  and  how  few  men  are  there  who  can  give  it  to  her!" 


532  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

finally  attracted  to  a  third  person,  and  a  divorce  enables  them  to 
start  afresh  with  better  experience  under  happier  auspices.  But 
as  things  are  at  present  that  is  a  sad  and  serious  process,  for 
many  impossible.  They  are  happier,  as  Milton  pointed  out, 
whose  trials  of  love  before  marriage  "have  been  so  many  divorces 
to  teach  them  experience." 

The  general  ignorance  concerning  the  art  of  love  may  be 
gauged  by  the  fact  that  perhaps  the  question  in  this  matter  most 
frequently  asked  is  the  crude  question  how  often  sexual  inter- 
course should  take  place.  That  is  a  question,  indeed,  which  has 
occupied  the  founders  of  religion,  the  law-givers,  and  the 
philosophers  of  mankind,  from  the  earliest  times.1  Zoroaster 
said  it  should  be  once  in  every  nine  days.  The  laws  of  Manes 
allowed  intercourse  during  fourteen  days  of  the  month,  but  a 
famous  ancient  Hindu  physician,  Susruta,  prescribed  it  six  times 
a  month,  except  during  the  heat  of  summer  when  it  should  be 
once  a  month,  while  other  Hindu  authorities  say  three  or  four 
times  a  month.  Solon's  requirement  of  the  citizen  that  inter- 
course should  take  place  three  times  a  month  fairly  agrees  with 
Zoroaster's.  Mohammed,  in  the  Koran,  decrees  intercourse  once 
a  week.  The  Jewish  Talmud  is  more  discriminating,  and  dis- 
tinguishes between  different  classes  of  people;  on  the  vigorous 
and  healthy  young  man,  not  compelled  to  work  hard,  once  a  day 
is  imposed,  on  the  ordinary  working  man  twice  a  week,  on 
learned  men  once  a  week.  Luther  considered  twice  a  week  the 
proper  frequency  of  intercourse. 

It  will  be  observed  that,  as  we  might  expect,  these  estimates 
tend  to  allow  a  greater  interval  in  the  earlier  ages  when  erotic 
stimulation  was  probably  less  and  erotic  erethism  probably  rare, 
and  to  involve  an  increased  frequency  as  we  approach  modern 
civilization.  It  will  also  be  observed  that  variation  occurs  within 
fairly  narrow  limits.  This  is  probably  due  to  the  fact  that  these 
law-givers  were   in   all   cases   men.     Women   law-givers  would 


1  In  more  recent  times  it  has  been  discussed  in  relation  to  the  fre- 
quency of  spontaneous  nocturnal  emissions.  See  "The  Phenomena  of 
Sexual  Periodicity,"  Sect.  II,  in  volume  i  of  these  Studies,  and  cf.  Mr. 
Perry-Coste's  remarks  on  "The  Annual  Rhythm,"  Vin  Appendix  B  of  the 
same  volume. 


ART    OF    LOVE.  533 

certainly  have  shown  a  much  greater  tendency  to  variation,  since 
the  variations  of  the  sexual  impulse  are  greater  in  women.1 
Thus  Zenobia  required  the  approach  of  her  husband  once  a 
month,  provided  that  impregnation  had  not  taken  place  the  pre- 
vious month,  while  another  queen  went  very  far  to  the  other 
extreme,  for  we  are  told  that  the  Queen  of  Aragon,  after  mature 
deliberation,  ordained  six  times  a  day  as  the  proper  rule  in  a 
legitimate  marriage.2 

It  may  be  remarked,  in  passing,  that  the  estimates  of  the  proper 
frequency  of  sexual  intercourse  may  always  be  taken  to  assume  that  there 
is  a  cessation  during  the  menstrual  period.  This  is  especially  the  case 
as  regards  early  periods  of  culture  when  intercourse  at  this  time  is 
usually  regarded  as  either  dangerous  or  sinful,  or  both.  (This  point  has 
been  discussed  in  the  "Phenomena  of  Periodicity"  in  volume  i  of  these 
Studies.)  Under  civilized  conditions  the  inhibition  is  due  to  aesthetic 
reasons,  the  wife,  even  if  she  desires  intercourse,  feeling  a  repugnance 
to  be  approached  at  a  time  when  she  regards  herself  as  "disgusting,"  and 
the  husband  easily  sharing  this  attitude.  It  may,  however,  be  pointed 
out  that  the  aesthetic  objection  is  very  largely  the  result  of  the  super- 
stitious horror  of  water  which  is  still  widely  felt  at  this  time,  and  would, 
to  some  extent,  disappear  if  a  more  scrupulous  cleanliness  were  observed. 
It  remains  a  good  general  rule  to  abstain  from  sexual  intercourse  during 
the  menstrual  period,  but  in  some  cases  there  may  be  adequate  reason  for 
breaking  it.  This  is  so  when  desire  is  specially  strong  at  this  time,  or 
when  intercourse  is  physically  difficult  at  other  times  but  easier  during 
the  relaxation  of  the  parts  caused  by  menstruation.  It  must  be  remem- 
bered also  that  the  time  when  the  menstrual  flow  is  beginning  to  cease  is 
probably,  more  than  any  other  period  of  the  month,  the  biologically 
proper  time  for  sexual  intercourse,  since  not  only  is  intercourse  easiest 
then,  and  also  most  gratifying  to  the  female,  but  it  affords  the  most 
favorable  opportunity  for  securing  fertilization. 

Schurig  long  since  brought  together  evidence  (Parthenologia,  pp. 
302  et  seq. )  showing  that  coitus  is  most  easy  during  menstruation.  Some 
of  the  Catholic  theologians  (like  Sanchez,  and  later,  Liguori),  going 
against  the  popidar  opinion,  have  distinctly  permitted  intercourse  during 
menstruation,  though  many  earlier  theologians  regarded  it  as  a  mortal 


i  See  "The  Sexual  Impulse  in  Women,  vol.  iii  of  these  Studies. 

2  Zenobia's  practice  is  referred  to  by  Gibbon,  Decline  and  Fall,  ed. 
Bury,  vol.  i,  p.  302.  The  Queen  of  Aragon's  decision  is  recorded  by  the 
Montpellier  jurist,  Nicolas  Bohier  (Boerius)  in  his  Decisiones,  etc.,  ed. 
of  1579,  p.  563;   it  is  referred  to  by  Montaigne,  Essais,  Bk.  iii,  Ch.  V. 


534  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

sin.  From  the  medical  side,  Kossmann  (Senator  and  Kaminer,  Health 
and  Disease  in  Relation  to  Marriage,  vol.  i,  p.  249)  advocates  coitus  not 
only  at  the  end  of  menstruation,  but  even  during  the  latter  part  of  the 
period,  as  being  the  time  when  women  most  usually  need  it,  the  marked 
disagreeableness  of  temper  often  shown  by  women  at  this  time,  he  says, 
being  connected  with  the  suppression,  demanded  by  custom,  of  a  natural 
desire.  "It  is  almost  always  during  menstruation  that  the  first  clouds 
appear  on  the  matrimonial  horizon." 

In  modern  times  the  physiologists  and  physicians  who  have 
expressed  any  opinion  on  this  subject .  have  usually  come  very 
near  to  Luther's  dictum.  Haller  said  that  intercourse  should  not 
be  much  more  frequent  than  twice  a  week.1  Acton  said  once  a 
week,  and  so  also  Hammond,  even  for  healthy  men  between  the 
ages  of  twenty-five  and  forty.2  Fiirbringer  only  slightly  exceeds 
this  estimate  by  advocating  from  fifty  to  one  hundred  single 
acts  in  the  year.3  Forel  advises  two  or  three  times  a  week  for  a 
man  in  the  prime  of  manhood,  but  he  adds  that  for  some  healthy 
and  vigorous  men  once  a  month  appears  to  be  excess.4  Mante- 
gazza,  in  his  Hygiene  of  Love,  also  states  that,  for  a  man  between 
twenty  and  thirty,  two  or  three  times  a  week  represents  the  proper 
amount  of  intercourse,  and  between  the  ages  of  thirty  and  forty- 
five,  twice  a  week.     Guyot  recommends  every  three  days.5 

It  seems,  however,  quite  unnecessary  to  lay  down  any  gen- 
eral rules  regarding  the  frequency  of  coitus.  Individual  desire 
and  individual  aptitude,  even  within  the  limits  of  health,  vary 
enormously.  Moreover,  if  we  recognize  that  the  restraint  of 
desire  is  sometimes  desirable,  and  often  necessary  for  prolonged 
periods,  it  is  as  well  to  refrain  from  any  appearance  of  asserting 
the  necessity  of  sexual  intercourse  at  frequent  and  regular  inter- 
vals. The  question  is  chiefly  of  importance  in  order  to  guard 
against  excess,  or  even  against  the  attempt  to  live  habitually 
close  to  the  threshold  of  excess.  Many  authorities  are,  therefore, 
careful  to  point  out  that  it  is  inadvisable  to  be  too  definite. 

1  Haller,  Elementa  Physiologic,  1778,  vol.  vii,  p.  57. 

2  Hammond,  Sexual  Impotence,  p.  129. 

3  Fiirbringer,  Senator  and  Kaminer,  Health  and  Disease  in  Relation 
to  Marriage,  vol.  i,  p.  221. 

4  Forel,  Die  Sexuelle  Frage,  p.  80. 

5  Guyot,  Breviaire  de  I' Amour  Experimental,  p.  144. 


ART    OF    LOVE.  535 

Thus  Erb,  while  remarking  that,  for  some,  Luther's  dictum 
represents  the  extreme  maximum,  adds  that  others  can  go  far 
beyond  that  amount  with  impunity,  and  he  considers  that  such 
variations  are  congenital.1  Eibbing,  again,  while  expressing 
general  agreement  with  Luther's  rule,  protests  against  any 
attempt  to  lay  down  laws  for  everyone,  and  is  inclined  to  say 
that  as  often  as  one  likes  is  a  safe  rule,  so  long  as  there  are 
no  bad  after-effects.2 

It  seems  to  be  generally  agreed  that  bad  effects  from  excess  in 
coitus,  when  they  do  occur,  are  rare  in  women  (see,  e.g.,  Hammond, 
Sexual  Impotence,  p.  127).  Occasionally,  however,  evil  effects  occur  in 
women.  (The  case,  possibly  to  be  mentioned  in  this  connection,  has  been 
recorded  of  a  man  whose  three  wives  all  became  insane  after  marriage, 
Journal  of  Mental  Science,  Jan.,  1879,  p.  611.)  In  cases  of  sexual  excess 
great  physical  exhaustion,  with  suspicion  and  delusions,  is  often  observed. 
Hutchinson  has  recorded  three  cases  of  temporary  blindness,  all  in  men, 
the  result  of  sexual  excess  after  marriage  {Archives  of  Surgery,  Jan., 
1893).  The  old  medical  authors  attributed  many  evil  results  to  excess 
in  coitus.  Thus  Schurig  (Spermatologia,  1720,  pp.  260  et  seq.)  brings 
together  cases  of  insanity,  apoplexy,  syncope,  epilepsy,  loss  of  memory, 
blindness,  baldness,  unilateral  perspiration,  gout,  and  death  attributed 
to  this  cause;  of  death  many  cases  are  given,  some  in  women,  but  one 
may  easily  perceive  that  post  was  often  mistaken  for  propter. 

There  is,  however,  another  consideration  which  can  scarcely 
escape  the  reader  of  the  present  work.  Nearly  all  the  estimates 
of  the  desirable  frequence  of  coitus  are  framed  to  suit  the- sup- 
posed physiological  needs  of  the   husband,3   and   they   appear 


1  Erb,  Ziemssen's  Handbuch,  Bd.  xi,  ii,  p.  148.  Guttceit  also  con- 
sidered that  the  very  wide  variations  found  are  congenital  and  natural. 
It  may  be  added  that  some  believe  that  there  are  racial  variations.  Thus 
it  has  been  stated  that  the  genital  force  of  the  Englishman  is  low,  and 
that  of  the  Frenchman  (especially  Provencal,  Languedocian,  and  Gascon) 
high,  while  Lowenfeld  believes  that  the  Germanic  race  excels  the  French 
in  aptitude  to  repeat  the  sex  act  frequently.  It  is  probable  that  little 
weight  attaches  to  these  opinions,  and  that  the  chief  differences  are 
individual  rather  than  racial. 

2  Ribbing,  L'Hygiene  Sexualle,  p.  75.  Kisch,  in  his  Sexual  Life  of 
Woman,  expresses  the  same  opinion. 

3  Mohammed,  who  often  displayed  a  consideration  for  women  very 
rare  in  the  founders  of  religions,  is  an  exception.  His  prescription  of 
once  a  week  represented  the  right  of  the  wife,  quite  independently  of  the 
number  of  wives  a  man  might  possess, 


536  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

usually  to  be  framed  in  the  same  spirit  of  exclusive  attention  to 
those  needs  as  though  the  physiological  needs  of  the  evacuation 
of  the  bowels  or  the  bladder  were  in  question.  But  sexual  needs 
are  the  needs  of  two  persons,  of  the  husband  and  of  the  wife.  It 
is  not  enough  to  ascertain  the  needs  of  the  husband;  it  is  also 
necessary  to  ascertain  the  needs  of  the  wife.  The  resultant  must 
be  a  harmonious  adjustment  of  these  two  groups  of  needs.  That 
consideration  alone,  in  conjunction  with  the  wide  variations  of 
individual  needs,  suffices  to  render  any  definite  rules  of  very 
trifling  value. 

It  is  important  to  remember  the  wide  limits  of  variation  in  sexual 
capacity,  as  well  as  the  fact  that  such  variations  in  either  direction  may- 
be healthy  and  normal,  though  undoubtedly  when  they  become  extreme 
variations  may  have  a  pathological  significance.  In  one  case,  for 
instance,  a  man  has  intercourse  once  a  month  and  finds  this  sufficient; 
he  has  no  nocturnal  emissions  nor  any  strong  desires  in  the  interval; 
yet  he  leads  an  idle  and  luxurious  life  and  is  not  restrained  by  any  moral 
or  religious  scruples ;  if  he  much  exceeds  the  frequency  which  suits  him 
he  suffers  from  ill-health,  though  otherwise  quite  healthy  except  for  a 
weak  digestion.  At  the  other  extreme,  a  happily  married  couple,  between 
forty-five  and  fifty,  much  attached  to  each  other,  had  engaged  in  sexual 
intercourse  every  night  for  twenty  years,  except  during  the  menstrual 
period  and  advanced  pregnancy,  which  had  only  occurred  once;  they  are 
hearty,  full-blooded,  intellectual  people,  fond  of  good  living,  and  they 
attribute  their  affection  and  constancy  to  this  frequent  indulgence  in 
coitus;   the  only  child,  a  girl,  is  not  strong,  though  fairly  healthy. 

The  cases  are  numerous  in  which,  on  special  occasions,  it  is  possible 
for  people  who  are  passionately  attached  to  each  other  to  repeat  the  act 
of  coitus,  or  at  all  events  the  orgasm,  an  inordinate  number  of  times 
within  a  few  hours.  This  usually  occurs  at  the  beginning  of  an  intimacy 
or  after  a  long  separation.  Thus  in  one  case  a  newly-married  woman 
experienced  the  orgasm  fourteen  times  in  one  night,  her  husband  in  the 
same  period  experiencing  it  seven  times.  In  another  case  a  woman  who 
had  lived  a  chaste  life,  when  sexual  relationships  finally  began,  once 
experienced  orgasm  fourteen  or  fifteen  times  to  her  partner's  three  times. 
In  a  ease  which,  I  have  been  assured  may  be  accepted  as  authentic,  a 
young  wife  of  highly  erotic,  very  erethic,  slightly  abnormal  tempera- 
ment, after  a  month's  absence  from  her  husband,  was  excited  twenty-six 
times  within  an  hour  and  a  quarter;  her  husband,  a  much  older  man, 
having  two  orgasms  during  this  period;  the  wife  admitted  that  she  felt 
a  "complete  wreck"  after  this,  but  it  is  evident  that  if  this  case  may 


AKT    OP    LOVE.  537 

be  regarded  as  authentic  the  orgasms  were  of  extremely  slight  intensity. 
A  young  woman,  newly  married  to  a  physically  robust  man,  once  had 
intercourse  with  him  eight  times  in  two  hours,  orgasm  occurring  each 
time  in  both  parties.  Guttceit  (Dreissig  Jahre  Praxis,  vol.  ii.  p.  311), 
in  Russia,  knew  many  cases  in  which  young  men  of  twenty-two  to  twenty- 
eight  had  intercourse  more  than  ten  times  in  one  night,  though  after 
the  fourth  time  there  is  seldom  any  semen.  He  had  known  some  men 
who  had  masturbated  in  early  boyhood,  and  began  to  consort  with  women 
at  fifteen,  yet  remained  sexually  vigorous  in  old  age,  while  he  knew 
others  who  began  intercourse  late  and  were  losing  force  at  forty.  Mante- 
gazza,  who  knew  a  man  who  had  intercourse  fourteen  times  in  one  day, 
remarks  that  the  stories  of  the  old  Italian  novelists  show  that  twelve 
times  was  regarded  as  a  rare  exception.  Burchard,  Alexander  VI's  secre- 
tary, states  that  the  Florentine  Ambassador's  son,  in  Rome  in  1489, 
"knew  a  girl  seven  times  in  one  hour"  (J.  Burchardi,  Diariun\  ed. 
Thuasne,  vol.  i,  p.  329 ) .  Olivier,  Charlemagne's  knight,  boasted,  accord- 
ing to  legend,  that  he  could  show  his  virile  power  one  hundred  times  in 
one  night,  if  allowed  to  sleep  with  the  Emperor  of  Constantinople's 
daughter;  he  was  allowed  to  try,  it  is  said,  and  succeeded  thirty  times 
(Schultz,  Das  Eofische  Leben,  vol.  i,  p.  581). 

It  will  be  seen  that  whenever  the  sexual  act  is  repeated  frequently 
within  a  short  time  it  is  very  rarely  indeed  that  the  husband  can  keep 
pace  with  the  wife.  It  is  true  that  the  woman's  sexual  energy  is  aroused 
more  slowly  and  with  more  difficulty  than  the  man's,  but  as  it  becomes 
aroused  its  momentum  increases.  The  man,  whose  energy  is  easily 
aroused,  is  easily  exhausted;  the  woman  has  often  scarcely  attained  her 
energy  until  after  the  first  orgasm  is  over.  It  is  sometimes  a  surprise 
to  a  young  husband,  happily  married,  to  find  that  the  act  of  sexual  inter- 
course which  completely  satisfies  him  has  only  served  to  arouse  his 
wife's  ardor.  Very  many  women  feel  that  the  repetition  of  the  act  sev- 
eral times  in  succession  is  needed  to,  as  they  may  express  it,  "clear  the 
system,"  and,  far  from  producing  sleepiness  and  fatigue,  it  renders  them 
bright  and  lively. 

The  young  and  vigorous  woman,  who  has  lived  a  chaste  life,  some- 
times feels  when  she  commences  sexual  relationships  as  though  she  really 
required  several  husbands,  and  needed  intercourse  at  least  once  a  day, 
though  later  when  she  becomes  adjusted  to  married  life  she  reaches  the 
conclusion  that  her  desires  are  not  abnormally  excessive.  The  husband 
has  to  adjust  himself  to  his  wife's  needs,  through  his  sexual  force  when 
he  possesses  it,  and,  if  not,  through  his  skill  and  consideration.  The 
rare  men  who  possess  a  genital  potency  which  they  can  exert  to  the 
gratification  of  women  without  injury  to  themselves  have  been,  by  Pro- 
fessor Benedikt,  termed  "sexual  athletes,"  and  he  remarks  that  such  men 
easily  dominate  women.     He  rightly  regards  Casanova  as  the  type  of  the 


538  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

sexual  athlete  (Archives  d' Anthropologic  Criminelle,  Jan.,  1896).  Nacke 
reports  the  case  of  a  man  whom  he  regards  as  a  sexual  athlete,  who 
throughout  his  life  had  intercourse  once  or  twice  daily  with  his  wife,  or 
if  she  was  unwilling,  with  another  woman,  until  he  became  insane  at  the 
age  of  seventy-five  (Zeitschrift  filr  Sexualwissenschaft,  Aug.,  1908,  p. 
507).  This  should  probably,  however,  be  regarded  rather  as  a  case  of 
morbid  hyperesthesia  than  of  sexual  athleticism. 

At  this  stage  we  reach  the  fundamental  elements  of  the  art  of 
love.  We  have  seen  that  many  moral  practices  and  moral 
theories  which  have  been  widely  current  in  Christendom  have 
developed  traditions,  still  by  no  means  extinct  among  us,  which 
were  profoundly  antagonistic  to  the  art  of  love.  The  idea  grew 
up  of  "marital  duties,"  of  "conjugal  rights."1  The  husband  had 
the  right  and  the  duty  to  perform  sexual  intercourse  with  his 
wife,  whatever  her  wishes  in  the  matter  might  be,  while  the  wife 
had  the  duty  and  the  right  (the  duty  in  her  case  being  usually 
put  first)  to  submit  to  such  intercourse,  which  she  was  frequently 
taught  to  regard  as  something  low  and  merely  physical,  an 
unpleasant  and  almost  degrading  necessity  which  she  would  do 
well  to  put  out  of  her  thoughts  as  speedily  as  possible.  It  is  not 
surprising  that  such  an  attitude  towards  marriage  has  been 
highly  favorable  to  conjugal  unhappiness,  more  especially  that  of 
the  wife,2  and  it  has  tended  to  promote  adultery  and  divorce. 
We  might  have  been  more  surprised  had  it  been  otherwise. 

The  art  of  love  is  based  on  the  fundamental  natural  fact  of, 
courtship;  and  courtship  is  the  effort  of  the  male  to  make  him- 
self acceptable  to  the  female.3  "The  art  of  love,"  said  Vatsya- 
yana,  one  of  the  greatest  of  authorities,  "is  the  art  of  pleasing 

1  How  fragile  the  claim  of  "conjugal  rights"  is,  may  be  sufficiently 
proved  by  the  fact  that  it  is  now  considered  by  many  that  the  very  term 
"conjugal  rights"  arose  merely  by  a  mistake  for  "conjugal  rites."  Before 
1733,  when  legal  proceedings  were  in  Latin,  the  term  used  was  obsequies, 
and  "rights,"  instead  of  "rites,"  seems  to  have  been  merely  a  typesetter's 
error  (see  Notes  and  Queries,  May  16,  1891;  May  6,  1899).  This 
explanation,  it  should  be  added,  only  applies  to  the  consecrated  term,  for 
there  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  underlying  idea  has  an  existence  quite 
independent  of  the  term. 

2  "In  most  marriages  that  are  not  happy,"  it  is  said  in  Rafford 
Pyke's  thoughtful  paper  on  "Husbands  and  Wives"  (Cosmopolitan.  1902), 
"it  is  the  wife  rather  than  the  husband  who  is  oftenest  disappointed." 

3  See  "Analysis  of  the  Sexual  Impulse,"  in  vol.  iii  of  these  Studies. 


AKT    OF    LOVE.  539 

women."  "A  man  must  never  permit  himself  a  pleasure  with 
his  wife/'  said  Balzac  in  his  Physiologie  du  Manage,  "which  he 
has  not  the  skill  first  to  make  her  desire."  The  whole  art  of  love 
is  there.  Women,  naturally  and  instinctively,  seek  to  make 
themselves  desirable  to  men,  even  to  men  whom  they  are 
supremely  indifferent  to,  and  the  woman  who  is  in  love  with  a 
man,  by  an  equally  natural  instinct,  seeks  to  shape  herself  to  the 
measure  which  individually  pleases  him.  This  tendency  is  not 
really  modified  by  the  fundamental  fact  that  in  these  matters  it 
is  only  the  arts  that  Nature  makes  which  are  truly  effective.  It 
is  finally  by  what  he  is  that  a  man  arouses  a  woman's  deepest 
emotions  of  sympathy  or  of  antipathy,  and  he  is  often  pleasing 
her  more  by  displaying  his  fitness  to  play  a  great  part  in  the 
world  outside  than  by  any  acquired  accomplishments  in  the  arts 
of  courtship.  When,  however,  the  serious  and  intimate  play  of 
physical  love  begins,  the  woman's  part  is,  even  biologically,  on  the 
surface  the  more  passive  part.1  She  is,  on  the  physical  side, 
inevitably  the  instrument  in  love;  it  must  be  his  hand  and  his 
bow  which  evoke  the  music. 

In  speaking  of  the  art  of  love,  however,  it  is  impossible  to 
disentangle  completely  the  spiritual  from  the  physical.  The  very 
attempt  to  do  so  is,  indeed,  a  fatal  mistake.  The  man  who  can 
only  perceive  the  physical  side  of  the  sexual  relationship  is,  as 
Hinton  was  accustomed  to  say,  on  a  level  with  the  man  who,  in 
listening  to  a  sonata  of  Beethoven  on  the  violin,  is  only  con- 
scious of  the  physical  fact  that  a  horse's  tail  is  being  scraped 
against  a  sheep's  entrails. 

The  image  of  the  musical  instrument  constantly  recurs  to  those  who 
write  of  the  art  of  love.  Balzac's  comparison  of  the  unskilful  husband 
to  the  orang-utan  attempting  to  play  the  violin  has  already  been  quoted. 
Dr.  Jules  Guyot,  in  his  serious  and  admirable  little  book,  Breviaire  de 
I' Amour  Experimental,  falls  on  to  the  same  comparison :     "There  are  an 


i  It  is  well  recognized  by  erotic  writers,  however,  that  women  may 
sometimes  take  a  comparatively  active  part.  Thus  Vatsyayana  says  that 
sometimes  the  woman  may  take  the  man's  position,  and  with  flowers  in 
her  hair  and  smiles  mixed  with  sighs  and  bent  head,  caressing  him  and 
pressing  her  breasts  against  him,  say:  "You  have  been  my  conqueror; 
it  is  my  turn  to  make  you  cry  for  mercy." 


540  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

immense  number  of  ignorant,  selfish,  and  brutal  men  who  give  themselves 
no  trouble  to  study  the  instrument  which  God  has  confided  to  them,  and 
do  not  so  much  as  suspect  that  it  is  necessary  to  study  it  in  order  to 

draw  out  its  slightest  chords Every  direct  contact,  even  with 

the  clitoris,  every  attempt  at  coitus  [when  the  feminine  organism  is  not 
aroused],  exercises  a  painful  sensation,  an  instinctive  repulsion,  a  feel- 
ing of  disgust  and  aversion.  Any  man,  any  husband,  who  is  ignorant  of 
this  fact,  is  ridiculous  and  contemptible.     Any  man,  any  husband,  who, 

knowing  it,  dares  to  disregard  it,  has  committed  an  outrage 

In  the  final  combination  of  man  and  woman,  the  positive  element,  the 
husband,  has  the  initiative  and  the  responsibility  for  the  conjugal  life. 
He  is  the  minstrel  who  will  produce  harmony  or  cacophony  by  his  hand 
and  his  bow.  The  wife,  from  this  point  of  view,  is  really  the  many- 
stringed  instrument  who  will  give  out  harmonious  or  discordant  sounds, 
according  as  she  is  well  or  ill  handled"  (Guyot,  Brev\air%  pp.  99,  115, 
138). 

That  such  love  corresponds  to  the  woman's  need  there  cannot  be 
any  doubt.  All  developed  women  desire  to  be  loved,  says  Ellen  Key,  not 
"en  male"  but  "en  artiste"  (Liebe  und  EJie,  p.  92).  "Only  a  man  of 
whom  she  feels  that  he  has  also  the  artist's  joy  in  her,  and  who  shows 
this  joy  through  his  timid  and  delicate  touch  on  her  soul  as  on  her  body, 
can  keep  the  woman  of  to-day.  She  will  only  belong  to  a  man  who  con- 
tinues to  long  for  her  even  when  he  holds  her  locked  in  his  arms.  And 
when  such  a  woman  breaks  out:  'You  want  me,  but  you  cannot  caress 
me,  you  cannot  tell  what  I  want,'  then  that  man  is  judged."  Love  is 
indeed,  as  Remy  de  Gourmont  remarks,  a  delicate  art,  for  which,  as  for 
painting  or  music,  only  some  are  apt. 

It  must  not  be  supposed  that  the  demand  on  the  lover  and 
husband  to  approach  a  woman  in  the  same  spirit,  with  the  same 
consideration  and  skilful  touch,  as  a  musician  takes  up  his  instru- 
ment is  merely  a  demand  made  by  modern  women  who  are 
probably  neurotic  or  hysterical.  No  reader  of  these  Studies  who 
has  followed  the  discussions  of  courtship  and  of  sexual  selection 
in  previous  volumes  can  fail  to  realize  that — although  we  have 
sought  to  befool  ourselves  by  giving  an  illegitimate  connotation 
to  the  word  brutal" — consideration  and  respect  for  the  female 
is  all  but  universal  in  the  sexual  relationships  of  the  animals 
below  man;  it  is  only  at  the  furthest  remove  from  the  "brutes/' 
among  civilized  men,  that  sexual  "Tbrutality"  is  at  all  common, 
and  even  there  it  is  chiefly  the  result  of  ignorance.     If  we  go 


ART    OF    LOVE.  541 

as  low  as  the  insects,  who  have  been  disciplined  by  no  family 
life,  and  are  generally  counted  as  careless  and  wanton,  we  may 
sometimes  find  this  attitude  towards  the  female  fully  developed, 
and  the  extreme  consideration  of  the  male  for  the  female  whom 
yet  he  holds  firmly  beneath  him,  the  tender  preliminaries,  the 
extremely  gradual  approach  to  the  supreme  sexual  act,  may  well 
furnish  an  admirable  lesson. 

This  greater  difficulty  and  delay  on  the  part  of  women  in 
responding  to  the  erotic  excitation  of  courtship  is  really  very 
fundamental  and — as  has  so  often  been  necessary  to  point  out 
in  previous  volumes  of  these  Studies — it  covers  the  whole  of 
woman's  erotic  life,  from  the  earliest  age  when  coyness  and 
modesty  develop.  A  woman's  love  develops  much  more  slowly 
than  a  man's  for  a  much  longer  period.  There  is  real  psycho- 
logical significance  in  the  fact  that  a  man's  desire  for  a  woman 
tends  to  arise  spontaneously,  while  a  woman's  desire  for  a  man 
tends  only  to  be  aroused  gradually,  in  the  measure  of  her  com- 
plexly developing  relationship  to  him.  Hence  her  sexual  emotion 
is  often  less  abstract,  more  intimately  associated  with  the 
individual  lover  in  whom  it  is  centred.  "The  way  to  my  senses 
is  through  my  heart,"  wrote  Mary  Wollstonecraft  to  her  lover 
Imlay,  ''but,  forgive  me !  I  think  there  is  sometimes  a  shorter 
cut  to  yours."  She  spoke  for  the  best,  if  not  for  the  largest  part, 
of  her  sex.  A  man  often  reaches  the  full  limit  of  his  physical 
capacity  for  love  at  a  single  step,  and  it  would  appear  that  his 
psychic  limits  are  often  not  more  difficult  to  reach.  This  is  the 
solid  fact  underlying  the  more  hazardous  statement,  so  often 
made,  that  woman  is  monogamic  and  man  polygamic. 

On  the  more  physical  side,  Guttceit  states  that  a  month  after  mar- 
riage not  more  than  two  women  out  of  ten  have  experienced  the  full 
pleasure  of  sexual  intercourse,  and  it  may  not  be  for  six  months,  a  year, 
or  even  till  after  the  birth  of  several  children,  that  a  woman  experiences 
the  full  enjoyment  of  the  physical  relationship,  and  even  then  only  with 
a  man  she  completely  loves,  so  that  the  conditions  of  sexual  gratifi- 
cation are  much  more  complex  in  women  than  in  men.  Similarly,  on  the 
psychic  side,  Ellen  Key  remarks  (Ueber  Liebe  und  Ehe,  p.  Ill)  :  "It  is 
certainly  true  that  a  woman  desires  sexual  gratification  from  a  man. 
But  while  in  her  this  desire  not  seldom  only  appears  after  she  has  begun 


542  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

to  love  a  man  enough  to  give  her  life  for  him,  a  man  often  desires  to 
possess  a  woman  physically  before  he  loves  her  enough  to  give  even  his 
little  finger  for  her.  The  fact  that  love  in  a  woman  mostly  goes  from 
the  soul  to  the  senses  and  often  fails  to  reach  them,  and  that  in  a  man 
it  mostly  goes  from  the  senses  to  the  soul  and  frequently  never  reaches 
that  goal — this  is  of  all  the  existing  differences  between  men  and  women 
that  which  causes  most  torture  to  both."  It  will,  of  course,  be  apparent 
to  the  reader  of  the  fourth  volume  of  these  Studies  on  "Sexual  Selection 
in  Man"  that  the  method  of  stating  the  difference  which  has  commended 
itself  to  Mary  Wollstonecraft,  Ellen  Key,  and  others,  is  not  strictly  cor- 
rect, and  the  chastest  woman,  after,  for  example,  taking  too  hot  a  bath, 
may  find  that  her  heart  is  not  the  only  path  through  which  her  senses 
may  be  affected.  The  senses  are  the  only  channels  to  the  external  world 
which  we  possess,  and  love  must  come  through  these  channels  or  not  at 
all.  The  difference,  however,  seems  to  be  a  real  one,  if  we  translate  it 
to  mean  that,  as  we  have  seen  reason  to  believe  in  previous  volumes  of 
these  Studies,  there  are  in  women  (1)  preferential  sensory  paths  of 
sexual  stimuli,  such  as,  apparently,  a  predominence  of  tactile  and  audi- 
tory paths  as  compared  with  men;  (2)  a  more  massive,  complex,  and 
delicately  poised  sexual  mechanism;  and,  as  a  result  of  this,  (3)  eventu- 
ally a  greater  amount  of  nervous  and  cerebral  sexual  irradiation. 

It  must  be  remembered,  at  the  same  time,  that  while  this  distinction 
represents  a  real  tendency  in  sexual  differentiation,  with  an  organic  and 
not  merely  traditional  basis,  it  has  about  it  nothing  whatever  that  is 
absolute.  There  are  a  vast  number  of  women  whose  sexual  facility,  again 
by  natural  tendency  and  not  merely  by  acquired  habits,  is  as  marked  as 
that  of  any  man,  if  not  more  so.  In  the  sexual  field,  as  we  have  seen  in 
a  previous  volume  (Analysis  of  the  Sexual  Impulse),  the  range  of  varia- 
bility is  greater  in  women  than  in  men. 

The  fact  that  love  is  an  art,  a  method  of  drawing  music  from 
an  instrument,  and  not  the  mere  commission  of  an  act  by  mutual 
consent,  makes  any  verbal  agreement  to  love  of  little  moment.  If 
love  were  a  matter  of  contract,  of  simple  intellectual  consent,  of 
question  and  answer,  it  would  never  have  come  into  the  world  at 
all.  Love  appeared  as  art  from  the  first,  and  the  subsequent 
developments  of  the  summary  methods  of  reason  and  speech  can- 
not abolish  that  fundamental  fact.  This  is  scarcely  realized  by 
those  ill-advised  lovers  who  consider  that  the  first  step  in  court- 
ship— and  perhaps  even  the  whole  of  courtship — is  for  a  man  to 
ask  a  woman  to  be  his  wife.  That  is  so  far  from  being  the  case 
that  it  constantly  happens  that  the  premature  exhibition  of  so 


ART    OF    LOVE.  543 

large  a  demand  at  once  and  for  ever  damns  all  the  wooer's 
chances.  It  is  lamentable,  no  doubt,  that  so  grave  and  fateful 
a  matter  as  that  of  marriage  should  so  often  be  decided  without 
calm  deliberation  and  reasonable  forethought.  But  sexual 
relationships  can  never,  and  should  never,  be  merely  a  matter  of 
cold  calculation.  When  a  woman  is  suddenly  confronted  by  the 
demand  that  she  should  yield  herself  up  as  a  wife  to  a  man  who 
has  not  yet  succeeded  in  gaining  her  affections  she  will  not  fail  to 
find — provided  she  is  lifted  above  the  cold-hearted  motives  of  self- 
interest — that  there  are  many  sound  reasons  why  she  should  not 
do  so.  And  having  thus  squarely  faced  the  question  in  cool 
blood  and  decided  it,  she  will  henceforth,  probably,  meet  that 
wooer  with  a  tunic  of  steel  enclosing  her  breast. 

"Love  must  be  revealed  by  acts  and  not  betrayed  by  words.  I 
regard  as  abnormal  the  extraordinary  method  of  a  hasty  avowal  before- 
hand ;  for  that  represents  not  the  direct  but  the  reflex  path  of  transmis- 
sion. However  sweet  and  normal  the  avowal  may  be  when  once  recip- 
rocity has  been  realized,  as  a  method  of  conquest  I  consider  it  dangerous 
and  likely  to  produce  the  reverse  of  the  result  desired."  I  take  these 
wise  words  from  a  thoughtful  "Essai  sur  PAmour"  {Archives  de  Psy- 
chologic, 1904)  by  a  non-psychological  Swiss  writer  who  is  recording  his 
own  experiences,  and  who  insists  much  on  the  predominance  of  the 
spiritual  and  mental  element  in  love. 

It  is  worthy  of  note  that  this  recognition  that  direct  speech  is  out 
of  place  in  courtship  must  not  be  regarded  as  a  refinement  of  civilization. 
Among  primitive  peoples  everywhere  it  is  perfectly  well  recognized  that 
the  offer  of  love,  and  its  acceptance  or  its  refusal,  must  be  made  by 
actions  symbolically,  and  not  by  the  crude  method  of  question  and 
answer.  Among  the  Indians  of  Paraguay,  who  allow  much  sexual  free- 
dom to  their  women,  but  never  buy  or  sell  love,  Mantegazza  states  (Rio 
de  la  Plata  e  Tenerife,  1867,  p.  225)  that  a  girl  of  the  people  will  come 
to  your  door  or  window  and  timidly,  with  a  confused  air,  ask  you,  in  the 
Guarani  tongue,  for  a  drink  of  water.  But  she  will  smile  if  you  inno- 
cently offer  her  water.  Among  the  Tarahumari  Indians  of  Mexico, 
with  whom  the  initiative  in  courting  belongs  to  the  women,  the 
girl  takes  the  first  step  through  her  parents,  then  she  throws 
small  pebbles  at  the  young  man;  if  he  throws  them  back  the  matter  is 
concluded  (Carl  Lumholtz,  Scritner's  Magazine,  Sept.,  1894,  p.  299).  In 
many  parts  of  the  world  it  is  the  woman  who  chooses  her  husband  (see, 
e.g.,  M.  A.  Potter,  Sohrab  tmd  Rust  em,  pp.  169  et  seq.},  and  she  very 


544  PSYCHOLOGY    OP    SEX. 

frequently  adopts  a  symbolical  method  of  proposal.  Except  when  the 
commercial  element  predominates  in  marriage,  a  similar  method  is  fre- 
quently adopted  by  men  also  in  making  proposals  of  marriage. 

It  is  not  only  at  the  beginning  of  courtship  that  the  act  of 
love  has  little  room  for  formal  declarations,  for  the  demands  and 
the  avowals  that  can  be  clearly  defined  in  speech.  The  same  rule 
holds  even  in  the  most  intimate  relationships  of  old  lovers, 
throughout  the  married  life.  The  permanent  element  in  modesty, 
which  survives  every  sexual  initiation  to  become  intertwined 
with  all  the  exquisite  impudicities  of  love,  combines  with  a  true 
erotic  instinct  to  rebel  against  formal  demands,  against  verbal 
affirmations  or  denials.  Love's  requests  cannot  be  made  in  words, 
nor  truthfully  answered  in  words :  a  fine  divination  is  still  needed 
as  long  as  love  lasts. 

The  fact  that  the  needs  of  love  cannot  be  expressed  but  must  be 
divined  has  long  been  recognized  by  those  who  have  written  of  the  art  of 
love,  alike  by  writers  within  and  without  the  European  Christian  tradi- 
tions. Thus  Zacchia,  in  his  great  medico-legal  treatise,  points  out  that 
a  husband  must  be  attentive  to  the  signs  of  sexual  desire  in  his  wife. 
"Women,"  he  says,  "when  sexual  desire  arises  within  them  are  accustomed 
to  ask  their  husbands  questions  on  matters  of  love;  they  flatter  and 
caress  them;  they  allow  some  part  of  their  body  to  be  uncovered  as  if 
by  accident ;  their  breasts  appear  to  swell ;  they  show  unusual  alacrity ; 
they  blush ;  their  eyes  are  bright ;  and  if  they  experience  unusual  ardor 
they  stammer,  talk  beside  the  mark,  and  are  scarcely  mistress  of  them- 
selves. At  the  same  time  their  private  parts  become  hot  and  swell.  All 
these  signs  should  convince  a  husband,  however  inattentive  he  may  be, 
that  his  wife  craves  for  satisfaction"  (Zacchiae  Questionum-  Medico- 
legalium  Opus,  lib.  vii,  tit.  iii,  quaest.  I;  vol.  ii,  p.  624  in  ed.  of  1688). 

The  old  Hindu  erotic  writers  attributed  great  importance  alike  to 
the  man's  attentiveness  to  the  woman's  erotic  needs,  and  to  his  skill  and 
consideration  in  all  the  preliminaries  of  the  sexual  act.  He  must  do  all 
that  he  can  to  procure  her  pleasure,  says  Vatsyayana.  When  she  is  on 
her  bed  and  perhaps  absorbed  in  conversation,  he  gently  unfastens  the 
knot  of  her  lower  garment.  If  she  protests  he  closes  her  mouth  with 
kisses.  Some  authors,  Vatsyayana  remarks,  hold  that  the  lover  should 
begin  by  sucking  the  nipples  of  her  breasts.  When  erection  occurs  he 
touches  her  with  his  hands,  softly  caressing  the  various  parts  of  her 
body.  He  should  always  press  those  parts  of  her  body  towards  which  she 
turns  her  eyes.     If  she  is  shy,  and  it  is  the  first  time,  he  will  place  his 


ART    OP    LOVE.  545 

hands  between  her  thighs  which  she  will  instinctively  press  together.  If 
she  is  young  he  will  put  his  hands  on  her  breasts,  and  she  will  no  doubt 
cover  them  with  her  own.  If  she  is  mature  he  will  do  all  that  may  seem 
fitting  and  agreeable  to  both  parties.  Then  he  will  take  her  hair  and 
her  chin  between  his  fingers  and  kiss  them.  If  she  is  very  young  she  will 
blush  and  close  her  eyes.  By  the  way  in  which  she  receives  his  caresses 
he  will  divine  what  pleases  her  most  in  union.  The  signs  of  her  enjoy- 
ment are  that  her  body  becomes  limp,  her  eyes  close,  she  loses  all 
timidity,  and  takes  part  in  the  movements  which  bring  her  most  closely 
to  him.  If,  on  the  other  hand,  she  feels  no  pleasure,  she  strikes  the  bed 
with  her  hands,  will  not  allow  the  man  to  continue,  is  sullen,  even  bites 
or  kicks,  and  continues  the  movements  of  coitus  when  the  man  has 
finished.  In  such  cases,  Vatsyayana  adds,  it  is  his  duty  to  rub  the  vulva 
with  his  hand  before  union  until  it  is  moist,  and  he  should  perform  the 
same  movements  afterwards  if  his  own  orgasm  has  occurred  first. 

With  regard  to  Indian  erotic  art  generally,  and  more  especially 
Vatsyayana,  who  appears  to  have  lived  some  sixteen  hundred  years  ago, 
information  will  be  found  in  Valentino,  "L'Hygiene  conjugale  ehez  les 
Hindous,"  Archives  Generates  de  Medecine,  Ap.  25,  1905;  Iwan  Bloch, 
"Indische  Medizin,"  Puschmann's  Eandbuch  der  GeschicMe  der  Medizin, 
vol.  i ;  Heimann  and  Stephan,  "Beitrage  zur  Ehehygiene  nach  der  Lehren 
des  Kamasutram,"  Zeitschaft  fur  Sexualioissenschaft,  Sept.,  1908;  also 
a  review  of  Richard  Schmidt's  German  translation  of  the  Kamashastra 
of  Vatsyayana  in  Zeitschrift  filr  Ethnologie,  1902,  Heft  2.  There  has 
long  existed  an  English  translation  of  this  work.  In  the  lengthy  preface 
to  the  French  translation  Lamairesse  points  out  the  superiority  of  Indian 
erotic  art  to  that  of  the  Latin  poets  by  its  loftier  spirit,  and  greater 
purity  and  idealism.  It  is  throughout  marked  by  respect  for  women,  and 
its  spirit  is  expressed  in  the  well-known  proverb :  "Thou  shalt  not  strike 
a  woman  even  with  a  flower."  See  also  Margaret  Noble's  Web  of  Indian 
Life,  especially  Ch.  Ill,  "On  the  Hindu  Woman  as  Wife,"  and  Ch.  IV, 
"Love  Strong  as  Death." 

The  advice  given  to  husbands  by  Guyot  {Br6viaire  de  V  Amour 
Experimental,  p.  422 )  closely  conforms  to  that  given,  under  very  different 
social  conditions,  by  Zacchia  and  Vatsyayana.  "In  a  state  of  sexual  need 
and  desire  the  woman's  lips  are  firm  and  vibrant,  the  breasts  are  swollen, 
and  the  nipples  erect.  The  intelligent  husband  cannot  be  deceived  by 
these  signs.  If  they  do  not  exist,  it  is  his  part  to  provoke  them  by  his 
kisses  and  caresses,  and  if,  in  spite  of  his  tender  and  delicate  excitations, 
the  lips  show  no  heat  and  the  breasts  no  swelling,  and  especially  if  the 
nipples  are  disagreeably  irritated  by  slight  suction,  he  must  arrest  his 
transports  and  abstain  from  all  contact  with  the  organs  of  generation, 
for  he  would  certainly  find  them  in  a  state  of  exhaustion  and  disposed  to 
repulsion.     If,  on  the  contrary,  the  accessory  organs  are  animated,  or 

35 


546  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

become  animated  beneath  his  caresses,  he  must  extend  them  to  the  gen- 
erative organs,  and  especially  to  the  clitoris,  which  beneath  his  touch  will 
become  full  of  appetite  and  ardor." 

The  importance  of  the  preliminary  titillation  of  the  sexual  organs 
has  been  emphasized  by  a  long  succession  alike  of  erotic  writers  and  phy- 
sicians, from  Ovid  (Ars  Amatoria  end  of  Bk.  II)  onwards.  Eulenburg 
(Die  Sexuale  Neuropathie,  p.  79)  considers  that  titillation  is  sometimes 
necessary,  and  Adler,  likewise  insisting  on  the  preliminaries  of  psychic 
and  physical  courtship  (Die  Mangelhafte  Geschleschtsem-pfindung  des 
Weibes,,  p.  188),  observes  that  the  man  who  is  gifted  with  insight  and 
skill  in  these  matters  possesses  a  charm  which  will  draw  sparks  of  sen- 
sibility from  the  coldest  feminine  heart.  The  advice  of  the  physician  is 
at  one  in  this  matter  with  the  maxims  of  the  erotic  artist  and  with  the 
needs  of  the  loving  woman.  In  making  love  there  must  be  no  haste, 
wrote  Ovid: — 

"Crede  mihi,  non  est  Veneris  properanda  voluptas, 
Sed  sensim  tarda  prolicienda  mora." 

"Husbands,  like  spoiled  children,"  a  woman  has  written,  "too  often 
miss  the  pleasure  which  might  otherwise  be  theirs,  by  clamoring  for  it 
at  the  wrong  time.  The  man  who  thinks  this  prolonged  courtship  pre- 
vious to  the  act  of  sex  union  wearisome,  has  never  given  it  a  trial.  It 
is  the  approach  to  the  marital  embrace,  as  well  as  the  embrace  itself, 
which  constitutes  the  charm  of  the  relation  between  the  sexes." 

It  not  seldom  happens,  remarks  Adler  (op.  cit.,  p.  186),  that  the 
insensibility  of  the  wife  must  be  treated — in  the  husband.  And  Guyot, 
bringing  forward  the  same  point,  writes  (op.  cit.,  p.  130)  :  "If  by  a 
delay  of  tender  study  the  husband  has  understood  his  young  bride,  if  he 
is  able  to  realize  for  her  the  ineffable  happiness  and  dreams  of  youth,  he 
will  be  beloved  forever;  he  will  be  her  master  and  sovereign  lord.  If  he 
has  failed  to  understand  her  he  will  fatigue  and  exhaust  himself  in  vain 
efforts,  and  finally  class  her  among  the  indifferent  and  cold  women.  She 
will  be  his  wife  by  duty,  the  mother  of  his  children.  He  will  take  his 
pleasure  elsewhere,  for  man  is  ever  in  pursuit  of  the  woman  who  experi- 
ences the  genesic  spasm.  Thus  the  vague  and  unintelligent  search  for  a 
half  who  can  unite  in  that  delirious  finale  is  the  chief  cause  of  all  con- 
jugal dissolutions.  In  such  a  case  a  man  resembles  a  bad  musician  who 
changes  his  violin  in  the  hope  that  a  new  instrument  will  bring  the 
melody  he  is  unable  to  play." 

The  fact  that  there  is  thus  an  art  in  love,  and  that  sexual 
intercourse  is  not  a  mere  physical  act  to  be  executed  by  force  of 
muscles,  may  help  to  explain  why  it  is  that  in  so  many  parts  of  the 


ART    OF    LOVE.  547 

world  defloration  is  not  immediately  effected  on  marriage.1  No 
doubt  religious  or  magic  reasons  may  also  intervene  here,  but,  as 
so  often  happens,  they  harmonize  with  the  biological  process. 
This  is  the  case  even  among  uncivilized  peoples  who  marry  early. 
The  need  for  delay  and  considerate  skill  is  far  greater  when,  as 
among  ourselves,  a  woman's  marriage  is  delayed  long  past  the 
establishment  of  puberty  to  a  period  when  it  is  more  difficult  to 
break  down  the  psychic  and  perhaps  even  physical  barriers  of 
personality. 

It  has  to  be  added  that  the  art  of  love  in  the  act  of  courtship 
is  not  confined  to  the  preliminaries  to  the  single  act  of  coitus. 
In  a  sense  the  life  of  love  is  a  continuous  courtship  with  a  con- 
stant progression.  The  establishment  of  physical  intercourse  is 
but  the  beginning  of  it.  This  is  especially  true  of  women.  "The 
consummation  of  love,"  says  Senancour,2  "which  is  often  the  end 
of  love  with  man  is  only  the  beginning  of  love  with  woman,  a 
test  of  trust,  a  gage  of  future  pleasure,  a  sort  of  engagement  for 
an  intimacy  to  come."  "A  woman's  soul  and  body,"  says  another 
writer,3  "are  not  given  at  one  stroke  at  a  given  moment;  but 
only  slowly,  little  by  little,  through  many  stages,  are  both 
delivered  to  the  beloved.  Instead  of  abandoning  the  young 
woman  to  the  bridegroom  on  the  wedding  night,  as  an  entrapped 
mouse  is  flung  to  the  cat  to  be  devoured,  it  would  be  better  to  let 
the  young  bridal  couple  live  side  by  side,  like  two  friends  and 
comrades,  until  the}''  gradually  learn  how  to  develop  and  use  their 
sexual  consciousness."  The  conventional  wedding  is  out  of  place 
as  a  preliminary  to  the  consummation  of  marriage,  if  only  on  the 
ground  that  it  is  impossible  to  say  at  what  stage  in  the  endless 
process  of  courtship  it  ought  to  take  place. 

A  woman,  unlike  a'  man,  is  prepared  by  Nature,  to  play  a 
skilful  part  in  the  art  of  love.  The  man's  part  in  courtship, 
which  is  that  of  the  male  throughout  the  zoological  series,  may  be 


1  Thus  among  the  Swahili  it  is  on  the  third  day  after  marriage  that 
the  bridegroom  is  allowed,  by  custom,  to  complete  defloration,  according 
to  Zache,  Zeitschrift  fur  Efhnolocfie,  1899,  11-111,  p.  84. 

2  De  V Amour,  vol.  ii,  p.  57. 

3  Robert  Michels,  "Brautstandsmoral,"  Geschlecht  und  OesellscJiaft, 
Jahrgang  I,  Heft  12. 


548  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

difficult  and  hazardous,  but  it  is  in  a  straight  line,  fairly  simple 
and  direct.  The  woman's  part,  having  to  follow  at  the  same 
moment  two  quite  different  impulses,  is  necessarily  always  in  a 
zigzag  or  a  curve.  That  is  to  say  that  at  every  erotic  moment 
her  action  is  the  resultant  of  the  combined  force  of  her  desire 
(conscious  or  unconscious)  and  her  modesty.  She  must  sail 
through  a  tortuous  channel  with  Scylla  on  the  one  side  and 
Charybdis  on  the  other,  and  to  avoid  either  danger  too  anxiously 
may  mean  risking  shipwreck  on  the  other  side.  She  must  be 
impenetrable  to  all  the  world,  but  it  must  be  an  impenetrability 
not  too  obscure  for  the  divination  of  the  right  man.  Her  speech 
must  be  honest,  but  yet  on  no  account  tell  everything;  her 
actions  must  be  the  outcome  of  her  impulses,  and  on  that  very 
account  be  capable  of  two  interpretations.  It  is  only  in  the  last 
resort  of  complete  intimacy  that  she  can  become  the  perfect 
woman, 

"Whose  speech  Truth  knows  not  from  her  thought, 
Nor  Love  her  body  from  her  soul." 

For  many  a  woman  the  conditions  for  that  final  erotic  avatar — 
"that  splendid  shamelessness  which,"  as  Eafford  Pyke  says,  "is 
the  finest  thing  in  perfect  love" — never  present  themselves  at  all. 
She  is  compelled  to  be  to  the  end  of  her  erotic  life,  what  she 
must  always  be  at  the  beginning,  a  complex  and  duplex  person- 
ality, naturally  artful.  Therewith  she  is  better  prepared  than 
man  to  play  her  part  in  the  art  of  love. 

The  man's  part  in  the  art  of  love  is,  however,  by  no  means 
easy.  That  is  not  always  realized  by  the  women  who  complain 
of  his  lack  of  skill  in  playing  it.  Although  a  man  has  not  to 
cultivate  the  same  natural  duplicity  as  a  woman,  it  is  necessary 
that  he  should  possess  a  considerable  power  of  divination.  He 
is  not  well  prepared  for  that,  because  the  traditional  masculine 
virtue  is  force  rather  than  insight.  The  male's  work  in  the 
world,  we  are  told,  is  domination,  and  it  is  by  such  domination 
that  the  female  is  attracted.  There  is  an  element  of  truth  in  that 
doctrine,  an  element  of  truth  which  may  well  lead  astray  the  man 
who  too  exclusively  relies  upon  it  in  the  art  of  love.  Violence 
is  bad  in  every  art,  and  in  the  erotic  art  the  female  desires  to  be 


ART    OF    LOVE.  549 

won  to  love  and  not  to  be  ordered  to  love.  That  is  fundamental. 
We  sometimes  see  the  matter  so  stated  as  if  the  objection  to 
force  and  domination  in  love  constituted  some  quite  new  and 
revolutionary  demand  of  the  "modern  woman."  That  is,  it  need 
scarcely  be  said,  the  result  of  ignorance.  The  art  of  love,  being 
an  art  that  Nature  makes,  is  the  same  now  as  in  essentials  it  has 
always  been,1  and  it  was  well  established  before  woman  came  into 
existence.  That  it  has  not  always  been  very  skilfully  played  is 
another  matter.  And,  so  far  as  the  man  is  concerned,  it  is  this 
very  tradition  of  masculine  predominance  which  has  contributed 
to  the  difficulty  of  playing  it  skilfully.  The  woman  admires  the 
male's  force;  she  even  wishes  herself  to  be  forced  to  the  things 
that  she  altogether  desires ;  and  yet  she  revolts  from  any  exertion 
of  force  outside  that  narrow  circle,  either  before  the  boundary  of 
it  is  reached  or  after  the  boundary  is  passed.  Thus  the  man's 
position  is  really  more  difficult  than  the  women  who  complain  of 
his  awkwardness  in  love  are  always  ready  to  admit.  He  must 
cultivate  force,  not  only  in  the  world  but  even  for  display  in  the 
erotic  field;  he  must  be  able  to  divine  the  moments  when,  in 
love,  force  is  no  longer  force  because  his  own  will  is  his  partner's 
will;  he  must,  at  the  same  time,  hold  himself  in  complete 
restraint  lest  he  should  fall  into  the  fatal  error  of  yielding  to  his 
own  impulse  of  domination;  and  all  this  at  the  very  moment 
when  his  emotions  are  least  under  control.  We  need  scarcely  be 
surprised  that  of  the  myriads  who  embark  on  the  sea  of  love,  so 
few  women,  so  very  few  men,  come  safely  into  port. 

It  may  still  seem  to  some  that  in  dwelling  on  the  laws  that 
guide  the  erotic  life,  if  that  life  is  to  be  healthy  and  complete,  we 
have  wandered  away  from  the  consideration  of  the  sexual  instinct 
in  its  relationship  to  society.  It  may  therefore  be  desirable  to 
return  to  first  principles  and  to  point  out  that  we  are  still  cling- 
ing to  the  fundamental  facts  of  the  personal  and  social  life. 
Marriage,  as  we  have  seen  reason  to  believe,  is  a  great  social 
institution ;  procreation,  which  is,  on  the  public  side,  its  supreme 
function,  is  a  great  social  end.     But  marriage  and  procreation 

1 1  may  refer  once  more  to  the  facts  brought  together  in  volume  iii 
of  these  Studies,  "The  Analysis  of  the  Sexual  Impulse." 


550  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    BEX. 

are  both  based  on  the  erotic  life.  If  the  erotic  life  is  not  Bound, 
then  marriage  is  broken  up,  practically  if  not  always  formally, 
and  the  process  of  procreation  is  carried  out  under  unfavorable 
conditions  or  not  at  all. 

This  social  and  personal  importance  of  the  erotic  life, 
though,  under  the  influence  of  a  false  morality  and  an  equally 
false  modesty,  it  has  sometimes  been  allowed  to  fall  into  the  back- 
ground in  stages  of  artificial  civilization,  has  always  been  clearly 
realized  by  those  peoples  who  have  vitally  grasped  the  relation- 
ships of  life.  Among  most  uncivilized  races  there  appear  to  be 
few  or  no  "sexually  frigid"  women.  It  is  little  to  the  credit  of 
our  own  "civilization"  that  it  should  be  possible  for  physicians 
to-day  to  assert,  even  with  the  faintest  plausibility,  that  there 
are  some  25  per  cent,  of  women  who  may  thus  be  described. 

The  whole  sexual  structure  of  the  world  is  built  up  on  the 
general  fact  that  the  intimate  contact  of  the  male  and  female 
who  have  chosen  each  other  is  mutually  pleasurable.  Below  this 
general  fact  is  the  more  specific  fact  that  in  the  normal  accom- 
plishment of  the  act  of  sexual  consummation  the  two  partners 
experience  the  acute  gratification  of  simultaneous  orgasm. 
Herein,  it  has  been  said,  lies  the  secret  of  love.  It  is  the  very 
basis  of  love,  the  condition  of  the  healthy  exercise  of  the  sexual 
functions,  and,  in  many  cases,  it  seems  probable,  the  condition 
also  of  fertilization. 

Even  savages  in  a  very  low  degree  of  culture  are  sometimes  patient 
and  considerate,  in  evoking  and  waiting  for  the  signs  of  sexual  desire  in 
their  females.  (I  may  refer  to  the  significant  case  of  the  Caroline 
Islanders,  as  described  by  Kubary  in  his  ethnographic  study  of  that  peo- 
ple and  quoted  in  volume  iv  of  these  Studies,  "Sexual  Selection  in  Man," 
Sect.  III.)  In  Catholic  days  theological  influence  worked  wholesomely 
in  the  same  direction,  although  the  theologians  were  so- keen  to  detect  the 
mortal  sin  of  lust.  It  is  true  that  the  Catholic  insistence  on  the  desira- 
bility of  simultaneous  orgasm  was  largely  due  to  the  mistaken  notion 
that  to  secure  conception  it  was  necessary  that  there  should  be  "insemi- 
nation" on  the  part  of  the  wife  as  well  as  of  the  husband,  but  that  was 
not  the  sole  source  of  the  theological  view.  Thus  Zacchia  discusses 
whether  a  man  ought  to  continue  with  his  wife  until  she  has  the  orgasm 
and  feels  satisfied,  and  he  decides  that  that  is  the  husband's  duty;   other- 


ART    OF    LOVE.  551 

wise  the  wife  falls  into  danger  either  of  experiencing  the  orgasm  during 
sleep,  or,  more  probably,  by  self-excitation,  "for  many  women,  when  their 
desires  have  not  been  satisfied  by  coitus,  place  one  thigh  on  the  other, 
pressing  and  rubbing  them  together  until  the  orgasm  occurs,  in  the  belief 
that  if  they  abstain  from  using  the  hands  they  have  committed  no  sin." 
Some  theologians,  he  adds,  favor  that  belief,  notably  Hurtado  de  Mendoza 
and  Sanchez,  and  he  further  quotes  the  opinion  of  the  latter  that  women 
who  have  not  been  satisfied  in  coitus  are  liable  to  become  hysterical  or 
melancholic  (Zacchice  Qucestionum  Medico-legalium  Opus,  lib.  vii,  tit. 
iii,  quaest.  VI).  In  the  same  spirit  some  theologians  seem  to  have  per- 
mitted irrumatio  (without  ejaculation),  so  long  as  it  is  only  the  pre- 
liminary to  the  normal  sexual  act. 

.Nowadays  physicians  have  fully  confirmed  the  belief  of  Sanchez. 
It  is  well  recognized  that  women  in  whom,  from  whatever  cause, 
acute  sexual  excitement  occurs  with  frequency  without  being  fol- 
lowed by  the  due  natural  relief  of  orgasm  are  liable  to  various  nervous 
and  congestive  symptoms  which  diminish  their  vital  effectiveness,  and 
very  possibly  lead  to  a  breakdown  in  health.  Kiseh  has  described,  as  a 
cardiac  neurosis  of  sexual  origin,  a  pathological  tachycardia  which  is  an 
exaggeration  of  the  physiological  quick  heart  of  sexual  excitement.  J. 
Inglis  Parsons  (British  Medical  Journal,  Oct.  22,  1904,  p.  1062)  refers 
to  the  ovarian  pain  produced  by  strong  unsatisfied  sexual  excitement, 
often  in  vigorous  unmarried  women,  and  sometimes  a  cause  of  great  dis- 
tress. An  experienced  Austrian  gynecologist  told  Hirth  (Wege  sur 
Heimat,  p.  613)  that  of  every  hundred  women  who  come  to  him  with 
uterine  troubles  seventy  suffered  from  congestion  of  the  womb,  which  he 
regarded  as  due  to  incomplete  coitus. 

It  is  frequently  stated  that  the  evil  of  incomplete  gratification  and 
absence  of  orgasm  in  women  is  chiefly  due  to  male  withdrawal,  that  is 
to  say  coitus  interruptus,  in  which  the  penis  is  hastily  withdrawn  as  soon 
as  involuntary  ejaculation  is  impending;  and  it  is  sometimes  said  that 
the  same  widely  prevalent  practice  is  also  productive  of  slight  or  serious 
results  in  the  male  (see,  e.g.,  L.  B.  Bangs,  Transactions  New  York 
Academy  of  Medicine,  vol.  ix,  1893;  D.  S.  Booth,  "Coitus  Interruptus 
and  Coitus  Reservatus  as  Causes  of  Profound  Neurosis  and  Psychosis," 
Alienist  and  Neurologist,  Nov.,  1906;  also,  Alienist  and  Neurologist, 
Oct.,  1897,  p.  588). 

It  is  undoubtedly  true  that  coitus  interruptus,  since  it  involves 
sudden  withdrawal  on  the  part  of  the  man  without  reference  to  the  stage 
of  sexual  excitation  which  his  partner  may  have  reached,  cannot  fail  to 
produce  frequently  an  injurious  nervous  effect  on  the  woman,  though  the 
injurious  effect  on  the  man,  who  obtains  ejaculation,  is  little  or  none. 
But  the  practice  is  so  widespread  that  it  cannot  be  regarded  as  neces- 
sarily involving  this  evil  result.     There  can,  I  am  assured,  be  no  doubt 


552  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

whatever  that  Blunireich  is  justified  in  his  statement  (Senator  and 
Kaminer,  Health  and  Disease  in  Relation  to  Marriage,  vol.  ii,  p.  783) 
that  "interrupted  coitus  is  injurious  to  the  genital  system  of  those  women 
only  who  are  disturbed  in  their  sensation  of  delight  by  this  form  of 
cohabitation,  in  whom  the  orgasm  is  not  produced,  and  who  continue  for 
hours  subsequently  to  be  tormented  by  feelings  of  an  unsatisfied  desire." 
Equally  injurious  effects  follow  in  normal  coitus  when  the  man's  orgasm 
occurs  too  soon.  "These  phenomena,  therefore,"  he  concludes,  "are  not 
characteristic  of  interrupted  coitus,  but  consequences  of  an  imperfectly 
concluded  sexual  cohabitation  as  such."  Kisch,  likewise,  in  his  elaborate 
and  authoritative  work  on  The  Sexual  Life  of  Woman,  also  states  that 
the  question  of  the  evil  results  of  coitus  interruptus  in  women  is  simply 
a  question  of  whether  or  not  they  receive  sexual  satisfaction.  {Cf.  also 
Fiirbringer,  Health  and  Disease  in  Relation  to  Marriage,  vol.  i,  pp.  232  et 
seq.)  This  is  clearly  the  most  reasonable  view  to  take  concerning  what 
is  the  simplest,  the  most  widespread,  and  certainly  the  most  ancient  of 
the  methods  of  preventing  conception.  In  the  Book  of  Genesis  we  find 
it  practiced  by  Onan,  and  to  come  down  to  modern  times,  in  the  sixteenth 
century  it  seems  to  have  been  familiar  to  French  ladies,  who,  according 
to  Brantome,  enjoined  it  on  their  lovers. 

Coitus  reservatus, — in  which  intercourse  is  maintained  even  for  very 
long  periods,  during  which  the  woman  may  have  orgasm  several  times 
while  the  man  succeeds  in  holding  back  orgasm, — so  far  from  being 
injurious  to  the  woman,  is  probably  the  form  of  coitus  which  gives  her 
the  maximum  of  gratification  and  relief.  For  most  men,  however,  it 
seems  probable  that  this  self-control  over  the  processes  leading  to  the 
involuntary  act  of  detumescence  is  difficult  to  acquire,  while  in  weak, 
nervous,  and  erethic  persons  it  is  impossible.  It  is,  however,  a  desirable 
condition  for  completely  adequate  coitus,  and  in  the  East  this  is  fully 
recognized,  and  the  aptitude  carefully  cultivated.  Thus  W.  D.  Suther- 
land states  ("Einiges  fiber  das  Alltagsleben  und  die  Volksmedizin  unter 
den  Bauern  Britischostindiens,"  Miinchener  Medizinische  Wochenschrift, 
No.  12,  1906)  that  the  Hindu  smokes  and  talks  during  intercourse  in 
order  to  delay  orgasm,  and  sometimes  applies  an  opium  paste  to  the 
glans  of  the  penis  for  the  same  purpose.  (See  also  vol.  iii  of  these 
Studies,  "The  Sexual  Impulse  in  Women.")  Some  authorities  have, 
indeed,  stated  that  the  prolongation  of  the  act  of  coitus  is  injurious  in 
its  effect  on  the  male.  Thus  R.  W.  Taylor  (Practical  Treatise  on  Sexual 
Disorders,  third  ed.,  p.  121)  states  that  it  tends  to  cause  atonic  impo- 
tence, and  Lowenfeld  (Sexualleten  und  Nervenleiden,  p.  74)  thinks  that 
the  swift  and  unimpeded  culmination  of  the  sexual  act  is  necessary  in 
order  to  preserve  the  vigor  of  the  reflex  reactions.  This  is  probably  true 
of  extreme  and  often  repeated  cases  of  indefinite  prolongation  of  pro- 
nounced erection  without  detumescence,  but  it  is  not  true  within  fairly 


ART    OF    LOVE.  553 

wide  limits  in  the  case  of  healthy  persons.  Prolonged  coitus  reservatus 
was  a  practice  of  the  complex  marriage  system  of  the  Oneida  community, 
and  I  was  assured  by  the  late  Noyes  Miller,  who  had  spent  the  greater 
part  of  his  life  in  the  community,  that  the  practice  had  no  sort  of  evil 
result.  Coitus  reservatus  was  erected  into  a  principle  in  the  Oneida 
community.  Every  man  in  the  community  was  theoretically  the  husband 
of  every  woman,  but  every  man  was  not  free  to  have  children  with  every 
woman.  Sexual  initiation  took  place  soon  after  puberty  in  the  case  of 
boys,  some  years  later  in  the  case  of  girls,  by  a  much  older  person  of  the 
opposite  sex.  In  intercourse  the  male  inserted  his  penis  into  the  vagina  and 
retained  it  there  for  even  an  hour  without  emission,  though  orgasm  took 
place  in  the  woman.  There  was  usually  no  emission  in  the  case  of  the 
man,  even  after  withdrawal,  and  he  felt  no  need  of  emission.  The  social 
feeling  of  the  community  was  a  force  on  the  side  of  this  practice,  the 
careless,  unskilful  men  being  avoided  by  women,  while  the  general 
romantic  sentiment  of  affection  for  all  the  women  in  the  community  was 
also  a  force.  Masturbation  was  unknown,  and  no  irregular  relations  took 
place  with  persons  outside  the  community.  The  practice  was  maintained 
for  thirty  years,  and  was  finally  abandoned,  not  on  its  demerits,  but  in 
deference  to  the  opinions  of  the  outside  world.  Mr.  Miller  admitted  that 
the  practice  became  more  difficult  in  ordinary  marriage,  which  favors  a 
more  mechanical  habit  of  intercourse.  The  information  received  from 
Mr.  Miller  is  supplemented  in  a  pamphlet  entitled  Male  Continence  (the 
name  given  to  coitus  reservatus  in  the  community),  written  in  1872  by 
the  founder,  John  Humphrey  Noyes.  The  practice  is  based,  he  says,  on 
the  fact  that  sexual  intercourse  consists  of  two  acts,  a  social  and  a 
propagative,  and  that  if  propagation  is  to  be  scientific  there  must  be 
no  confusion  of  these  two  acts,  and  procreation  must  never  be  involun- 
tary. It  was  in  1844,  he  states,  that  this  idea  occurred  to  him  as  a 
result  of  a  resolve  to  abstain  from  sexual  intercourse  in  consequence  of 
his  wife's  delicate  health  and  inability  to  bear  healthy  children,  and  in 
his  own  case  he  found  the  practice  "a  great  deliverance.  It  made  a 
happy  household."  He  points  out  that  the  chief  members  of  the  Oneida 
community  "belonged  to  the  most  respectable  families  in  Vermont,  had 
been  educated  in  the  best  schools  of  New  England  morality  and  refine- 
ment, and  were,  by  the  ordinary  standards,  irreproachable  in  their  con- 
duct so  far  as  sexual  matters  are  concerned,  till  they  deliberately 
commenced,  in  1846,  the  experiment  of  a  new  state  of  society,  on  prin- 
ciples which  they  had  been  long  maturing  and  were  prepared  to  defend 
before  the  world."  In  relation  to  male  continence,  therefore,  Noyes 
thought  the  community  might  fairly  be  considered  "the  Committee  of 
Providence  to  test  its  value  in  actual  life."  He  states  that  a  careful 
medical  comparison  of  the  statistics  of  the  community  had  shown  that 
the  rate  of  nervous  disease  in  the  community  was  considerably  below  the 


554  PSYCHOLOGY    OE    SES. 

average  outside,  and  that  only  two  cases  of  nervous  disorder  had  occurred 
which  could  be  traced  with  any  probability  to  a  misuse  of  male  contin- 
ence. This  has  been  confirmed  by  Van  de  Warker,  who  studied  forty- 
two  women  of  the  community  without  finding  any  undue  prevalence  of 
reproductive  diseases,  nor  could  he  find  any  diseased  condition  attribu- 
table to  the  sexual  habits  of  the  community  (cf.  C.  Reed,  Text-Booh  of 
Gynecology,  1901,  p.  9). 

Nbyes  believed  that  "male  continence"  had  never  previously  been 
a  definitely  recognized  practice  based  on  theory,  though  there  might  have 
been  occasional  approximation  to  it.  This  is  probably  true  if  the  coitus 
is  reservatus  in  the  full  sense,  with  complete  absence  of  emission.  Pro- 
longed coitus,  however,  permitting  the  woman  to  have  orgasm  more  than 
once,  while  the  man  has  none,  has  longbeen  recognized.  Thus  in  the  seven- 
teenth century  Zacchia  discussed  whether  such  a  practice  is  legitimate 
(Zacchice  Questionum  Opus,  ed.  of  1688,  lib.  vii,  tit.  iii,  qusest.  VI).  In 
modern  times  it  is  occasionally  practiced,  without  any  theory,  and  is 
always  appreciated  by  the  woman,  while  it  appears  to  have  no  bad  effect 
on  the  man.  In  such  a  case  it  will  happen  that  the  act  of  coitus  may 
last  for  an  hour  and  a  quarter  or  even  longer,  the  maximum  of  the 
woman's  pleasure  not  being  reached  until  three-quarters  of  an  hour  have 
passed;  during  this  period  the  woman  will  experience  orgasm  some  four 
or  five  times,  the  man  only  at  the  end.  It  may  occasionally  happen  that 
a  little  later  the  woman  again  experiences  desire,  and  intercourse  begins 
afresh  in  the  same  way.  But  after  that  she  is  satisfied,  and  there  is  no 
recurrence  of  desire. 

It  may  be  desirable  at  this  point  to  refer  briefly  to  the  chief  varia- 
tions in  the  method  of  effecting  coitus  in  their  relationship  to  the  art  of 
love  and  the  attainment  of  adequate  and  satisfying  detumescence. 

The  primary  and  essential  characteristic  of  the  specifically  human 
method  of  coitus  is  the  fact  that  it  takes  place  face  to  face.  The  fact 
that  in  what  is  usually  considered  the  typically  normal  method  of  coitus 
the  woman  lies  supine  and  the  man  above  her  is  secondary.  Psychically, 
this  front-to-front  attitude  represents  a  great  advance  over  the  quadru- 
pedal method.  The  two  partners  reveal  to  each  other  the  most  important, 
the  most  beautiful,  the  most  expressive  sides  of  themselves,  and  thus 
multiply  the  mutual  pleasure  and  harmony  of  the  intimate  act  of  union. 
Moreover,  this  face-to-face  attitude  possesses  a  great  significance,  in  the 
fact  that  it  is  the  outward  sign  that  the  human  couple  has  outgrown 
the  animal  sexual  attitude  of  the  hunter  seizing  his  prey  in  the  act  of 
flight,  and  content  to  enjoy  it  in  that  attitude,  from  behind.  The  human 
male  may  be  said  to  retain  the  same  attitude,  but  the  female  lias  turned 
round;  she  has  faced  her  partner  and  approached  him,  and  so  symbolizes 
her  deliberate  consent  to  the  act  of  union. 

The  human  variations  in  the  exercise  of  coitus,  both  individual  and 


ART    OF    LOVE.  555 

national,  are,  however,  extremely  numerous.  "To  be  quite  frank,"  says 
Fiirbringer  (Senator  and  Kaminer,  Health  and  Disease  in  Relation  to 
Marriage,  vol.  i,  p.  213),  "I  can  hardly  think  of  any  combination  which 
does  not  figure  among  my  case-notes  as  having  been  practiced  by  my 
patients."  We  must  not  too  hastily  conclude  that  such  variations  are 
due  to  vicious  training.  That  is  far  from  being  the  case.  They 
often  occur  naturally  and  spontaneously.  Freud  has  properly  pointed 
out  ( in  the  second  series  of  his  Beitrage  zur  Neurosenlehre,  "Bruehstiick" 
etc.)  that  we  must  not  be  too  shocked  even  when  the  idea  of  fellatio 
spontaneously  presents  itself  to  a  woman,  for  that  idea  has  a  harmless 
origin  in  the  resemblance  between  the  penis  and  the  nipple.  Similarly, 
it  may  be  added,  the  desire  for  cunnilinctus,  which  seems  to  be  much  more 
often  latently  present  in  women  than  is  the  desire  for  its  performance  in 
men,  has  a  natural  analogy  in  the  pleasure  of  suckling,  a  pleasure  which 
is  itself  indeed  often  erotically  tinged  (see  vol.  iv  of  these  Studies, 
"Sexual  Selection  in  Man,"  Touch,  Sect.  III). 

Every  variation  in  this  matter,  remarks  Remy  de  Gourmont  (Phy- 
sique de  V Amour,  p.  264)  partakes  of  the  sin  of  luxury,  and  some  of  the 
theologians  have  indeed  considered  any  position  in  coitus  but  that  which 
is  usually  called  normal  in  Europe  as  a  mortal  sin.  Other  theologians, 
however,  regarded  such  variations  as  only  venial  sins,  provided  ejacula- 
tion took  place  in  the  vagina,  just  as  some  theologians  would  permit 
irrumatio  as  a  preliminary  to  coitus,  provided  there  was  no  ejaculation. 
Aquinas  took  a  serious  view  of  the  deviations  from  normal  intercourse; 
Sanchez  was  more  indulgent,  especially  in  view  of  his  doctrine,  derived 
from  the  Greek  and  Arabic  natural  philosophers,  that  the  womb  can 
attract  the  sperm,  so  that  the  natural  end  may  be  attained  even  in 
unusual  positions. 

Whatever  difference  of  opinion  there  may  have  been  among  ancient 
theologians,  it  is  well  recognized  by  modern  physicians  that  variations 
from  the  ordinary  method  of  coitus  are  desirable  in  special  cases.  Thus 
Kiseh  points  out  (Sterilitat  des  Weibes,  p.  107)  that  in  some  cases  it  is 
only  possible  for  the  woman  to  experience  sexual  excitement  when  coitus 
takes  place  in  the  lateral  position,  or  in  the  a  posteriori  position,  or 
when  the  usual  position  is  reversed;  and  in  his  Sexual  Life  of  Woman, 
also,  Kisch  recommends  several  variations  of  position  for  coitus.  Adler 
points  out  {op.  cit.,  pp.  151,  186)  the  value  of  the  same  positions  in 
some  cases,  and  remarks  that  such  variations  often  call  forth  latent 
sexual  feelings  as  by  a  charm.  Such  cases  are  indeed,  by  no  means  infre- 
quent, the  advantage  of  the  unusual  position  being  due  either  to  physical 
or  psychic  causes,  and  the  discovery  of  the  right  variation  is  sometimes 
found  in  a  merely  playful  attempt.  It  has  occasionally  happened,  also, 
that  when  intercourse  has  habitually  taken  place  in  an  abnormal  position, 
no  satisfaction  is  experienced  by  the  woman  until  the  normal  position  is 


556  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

adopted.  The  only  fairly  common  variation  of  coitus  which  meets  with 
unqualified  disapproval  is  that  in  the  erect  posture.  (See  e.g.,  Hammond, 
op.  cit.  pp.  257  et  seq.) 

Lucretius  specially  recommended  the  quadrupedal  variation 
of  coitus  (Bk.  iv,  1258),  and  Ovid  describes  (end  of  Bk.  iii  of  the  Ars 
Amatoria)  what  he  regards  as  agreeable  variations,  giving  the  preference, 
as  the  easiest  and  simplest  method,  to  that  in  which  the  woman  lies  half 
supine  on  her  side.  Perhaps,  however,  the  variation  which  is  nearest  to 
the  normal  attitude  and  which  has  most  often  and  most  completely  com- 
mended itself  is  that  apparently  known  to  Arabic  erotic  writers  as  dole 
el  ars,  in  which  the  man  is  seated  and  his  partner  is  astride  his  thighs, 
embracing  his  body  with  her  legs  and  his  neck  with  her  arms,  while  he 
embraces  her  waist;  this  is  stated  in  the  Arabic  Perfumed  Garden  to  be 
the  method  preferred  by  most  women. 

The  other  most  usual  variation  is  the  inverse  normal  position  in 
which  the  man  is  supine,  and  the  woman  adapts  herself  to  this  position, 
which  permits  of  several  modifications  obviously  advantageous,  especially 
when  the  man  is  much  larger  than  his  partner.  The  Christian  as  well 
as  the  Mahommedan  theologians  appear,  indeed,  to  have  been  generally 
opposed  to  this  superior  position  of  the  female,  apparently,  it  would 
seem,  because  they  regarded  the  literal  subjection  of  the  male  which  it 
involves  as  symbolic  of  a  moral  subjection.  The  testimony  of  many  peo- 
ple to-day,  however,  is  decidedly  in  favor  of  this  position,  more  especially 
as  regards  the  woman,  since  it  enables  her  to  obtain  a  better  adjustment 
and  greater  control  of  the  process,  and  so  frequently  to  secure  sexual 
satisfaction  which  she  may  find  difficult  or  impossible  in  the  normal 
position. 

The  theologians  seem  to  have  been  less  unfavorably  disposed  to  the 
position  normal  among  quadrupeds,  a  posteriori,  though  the  old  Peni- 
tentials  were  inclined  to  treat  it  severely,  the  Penitential  of  Angers  pre- 
scribing forty  days  penance,  and  Egbert's  three  years,  if  practiced 
habitually.  (It  is  discussed  by  J.  Petermann,  "Venus  Aversa,"  Sexual- 
Probleme,  Feb.,  1909).  There  are  good  reasons  why  in  many  cases  this 
position  should  be  desirable,  more  especially  from  the  point  of  view  of 
women,  who  indeed  not  infrequently  prefer  it.  It  must  be  always  remem- 
bered, as  has  already  been  pointed  out,  that  in  the  progress  from  anthro- 
poid to  man  it  is  the  female,  not  the  male,  whose  method  of  coitus  has  been 
revolutionized.  While,  however,  the  obverse  human  position  represents  a 
psychic  advance,  there  has  never  been  a  complete  physical  readjustment 
of  the  female  organs  to  the  obverse  method.  More  especially,  in  Adler's 
opinion  (op.  cit.,  pp.  117-119),  the  position  of  the  clitoris  is  such  that, 
as  a  rule,  it  is  more  easily  excited  by  coitus  from  behind  than  from  in 
front.  A  more  recent  writer,  Klotz,  in  his  book,  Der  Mensch  ein  Vier- 
fiissler  (1908),  even  takes  the  too  extreme  position  that  the  quadrupedal 


ART    OF    LOVE.  557 

method  of  coitus,  being  the  only  method  that  insures  due  contact  with 
the  clitoris,  is  the  natural  human  method.  It  must,  however,  be 
admitted  that  the  posterior  mode  of  coitus  is  not  only  a  widespread,  but 
a  very  important  variation,  in  either  of  its  two  most  important  forms: 
the  Pompeiian  method,  in  which  the  woman  bends  forwards  and  the  man 
approaches  behind,  or  the  method  described  by  Boccaccio,  in  which  the 
man  is  supine  and  the  woman  astride. 

Fellatio  and  cunnilinctus,  while  they  are  not  strictly  methods  of 
coitus,  in  so  far  as  they  do  not  involve  the  penetration  of  the  penis  into 
the  vagina,  are  very  widespread  as  preliminaries,  or  as  vicarious  forms 
of  coitus,  alike  among  civilized  and  uncivilized  peoples.  Thus,  in  India, 
I  am  told  that  fellatio  is  almost  universal  in  households,  and  regarded 
as  a  natural  duty  towards  the  paterfamilias.  As  regards  cunnilinctus 
Max  Dessoir  has  stated  (Allgemeine  Zeitschrift  fur  Psychiatrie,  1894, 
Heft  5)  that  the  superior  Berlin  prostitutes  say  that  about  a  quarter 
of  their  clients  desire  to  exercise  this,  and  that  in  France  and  Italy  the 
proportion  is  higher;  the  number  of  women  who  find  cunnilinctus 
agreeable  is  without  doubt  much  greater.  Intercourse  per  anum  must 
also  be  regarded  as  a  vicarious  form  of  coitus.  It  appears  to  be  not  uncom- 
mon, especially  among  the  lower  social  classes,  and  while  most  often 
due  to  the  wish  to  avoid  conception,  it  is  also  sometimes  practiced  as 
a  sexual  aberration,  at  the  wish  either  of  the  man  or  the  woman,  the 
anus  being  to  some  extent  an  erogenous  zone. 

The  ethnic  variations  in  method  of  coitus  were  briefly  discussed 
in  volume  v  of  these  Studies,  "The  Mechanism  of  Detumeseence,"  Sec- 
tion II.  In  all  civilized  countries,  from  the  earliest  times,  writers  on 
the  erotic  art  have  formally  and  systematically  set  forth  the  different 
positions  for  coitus.  The  earliest  writing  of  this  kind  now  extant  seems 
to  be  an  Egyptian  papyrus  preserved  at  Turin  of  the  date  B.  C.  1300; 
in  this,  fourteen  different  positions  are  represented.  The  Indians, 
according  to  Iwan  Bloch,  recognize  altogether  forty-eight  different  posi- 
tions; the  Ananga  Ranga  describes  thirty- two  main  forms.  The 
Mohammedan  Perfumed  Garden  describes  forty  forms,  as  well  as  six 
different  kinds  of  movement  during  coitus.  The  Eastern  books  of  this 
kind  are,  on  the  whole,  superior  to  those  that  have  been  produced  by 
the  Western  world,  not  only  by  their  greater  thoroughness,  but  by  the 
higher  spirit  by  which  they  have  often  been  inspired. 

The  ancient  Greek  erotic  writings,  now  all  lost,  in  which  the 
modes  of  coitus  were  described,  were  nearly  all  attributed  to  women. 
According  to  a  legend  recorded  by  Suidas,  the  earliest  writer  of  this 
kind  was  Astyanassa,  the  maid  of  Helen  of  Troy.  Elephantis,  the 
poetess,  is  supposed  to  have  enumerated  nine  different  postures.  Numer- 
ous women  of  later  date  wrote  on  these  subjects,  and  one  book  is 
attributed  to  Polycrates,  the  sophist. 


558  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

Aretino — who  wrote  after  the  influence  of  Christianity  had 
degraded  erotic  matters  perilously  near  to  that  region  of  pornography 
from  which  they  are  only  to-day  beginning  to  be  rescued — in  his  Son- 
netti  Lussuriosi  described  twenty-six  different  methods  of  coitus,  each 
one  accompanied  by  an  illustrative  design  by  Giulio  Roinano,  the  chief 
among  Raphael's  pupils.  Veniero,  in  his  Puttana  Errante,  described 
thirty-two  positions.  More  recently  Forberg,  the  chief  modern  authority, 
has  enumerated  ninety  positions,  but,  it  is  said,  only  forty-eight  can, 
even  on  the  most  liberal  estimate,  be  regarded  as  coming  within  the 
range  of  normal  variation. 

The  disgrace  which  has  overtaken  the  sexual  act,  and  rendered  it 
a  deed  of  darkness,  is  doubtless  largely  responsible  for  the  fact  that  the 
chief  time  for  its  consummation  among  modern  civilized  peoples  is  the 
darkness  of  the  early  night  in  stuffy  bedrooms  when  the  fatigue  of  the 
day's  labors  is  struggling  with  the  artificial  stimulation  produced  by 
heavy  meals  and  alcoholic  drinks.  This  habit  is  partly  responsible  for 
the  indifference  or  even  disgust  with  which  women  sometimes  view 
coitus. 

Many  more  primitive  peoples  are  wiser.  The  New  Guinea  Papuans 
of  Astrolabe  Bay,  according  to  Vahness  (Zeitschrift  fur  Ethnologie, 
1900,  Heft  5,  p  414),  though  it  must  be  remembered  that  the  association 
of  the  sexual  act  with  darkness  is  much  older  than  Christianit}*,  and 
connected  with  early  religious  notions  (cf.  Hesiod,  Works  and  Days, 
Bk.  II),  always  have  sexual  intercourse  in  the  open  air.  The  hard- 
working women  of  the  Gebvuka  and  Buru  Islands,  again,  are  too 
tired  for  coitus  at  night;  it  is  carried  out  in  the  day  time  under 
the  trees,  and  the  Serang  Islanders  also  have  coitus  in  the  woods  (Ploss 
and  Bartels,  Das  Weib,  Bk.  i,  Ch.  XVII). 

It  is  obviously  impracticable  to  follow  these  examples  in  modern 
cities,  even  if  avocation  and  climate  permitted.  It  is  also  agreed  that 
sexual  intercourse  should  be  followed  by  repose.  There  seems  to  be 
little  doubt,  however,  that  the  early  morning  and  the  daylight  are  a 
more  favorable  time  than  the  early  night.  Conception  should  take  place 
in  the  light,  said  Michelet  (U  Amour,  p.  153)  ;  sexual  intercourse  in 
the  darkness  of  night  is  an  act  committed  with  a  mere  female  animal; 
in  the  day-time  it  is  union  with  a  loving  and  beloved  individual  person. 

This  has  been  widely  recognized.  The  Greeks,  as  we  gather  from 
Aristophanes  in  the  Archarnians ,  regarded  sunrise  as  the  appropriate 
time  for  coitus.  The  South  Slavs  also  say  that  dawn  is  the  time  for 
coitus.  Many  modern  authorities  have  urged  the  advantages  of  early 
morning  coitus.  Morning,  said  Roubaud  (Traite  de  I'Impuissance,  pp. 
151-3)  is  the  time  for  coitus,  and  even  if  desire  is  greater  in  the  evening, 
pleasure  is  greater  in  the  morning.  Osiander  also  advised  early  morn- 
ing coitus,  and  Venette,  in  an  earlier  century,  discussing  "at  what  hour 


ART    OF    LOVE.  559 

a  man  should  amorously  embrace  his  wife"  (La  Generation  de  VHomme, 
Part  II,  Ch.  V),  while  thinking  it  is  best  to  follow  inclination,  remarks 
that  "a  beautiful  woman  looks  better  by  sunlight  than  by  candlelight." 
A  few  authorities,  like  Burdaeh,  have  been  content  to  accept  the  custom 
of  night  coitus,  and  Busch  (Das  GescKlechtsleben  des  Weibes,  vol.  i,  p. 
214)  was  inclined  to  think  the  darkness  of  night  the  most  "natural" 
time,  while  Fiirbringer  (Senator  and  Kaminer,  Health  and  Disease  in 
Relation  to  Marriage,  vol.  i,  p.  217)  thinks  that  early  morning  is 
"occasionally"  the  best  time. 

To  some,  on  the  other  hand,  the  exercise  of  sexual  intercourse  in 
the  sunlight  and  the  open  air  seems  so  important  that  they  are  inclined 
to  elevate  it  to  the  rank  of  a  religious  exercise.  I  quote  from  a  com- 
munication on  this  point  received  from  Australia:  "This  shameful 
thing  that  must  not  be  spoken  of  or  done  (except  in  the  dark)  will  some 
day,  I  believe,  become  the  one  religious  ceremony  of  the  human  race, 
in  the  spring.  (Oh,  what  springs! )  People  will  have  become  very  sane, 
well-bred,  aristocratic  (all  of  them  aristocrats),  and  on  the  whole 
opposed  to  rites  and  superstitions,  for  they  will  have  a  perfect  knowl- 
edge of  the  past.  The  coition  of  lovers  in  the  springtime  will  be  the 
one  religious  ceremony  they  will  allow  themselves.  I  have  a  vision 
sometimes  of  the  holy  scene,  but  I  am  afraid  it  is  too  beautiful  to 
describe.  'The  intercourse  of  the  sexes,  I  have  dreamed,  is  ineffably 
beautiful,  too  fair  to  be  remembered,'  wrote  the  chaste  Thoreau.  Verily 
human  beauty,  joy,  and  love  will  reach  their  divinest  height  during 
those  inaugural  days  of  springtide  coupling.  When  the  world  is  one 
Paradise,  the  consummation  of  the  lovers,  the  youngest  and  most  beau- 
tiful, will  take  place  in  certain  sacred  valleys  in  sight  of  thousands 
assembled  to  witness  it.  For  days  it  will  take  place  in  these  valleys 
where  the  sun  will  rise  on  a  dream  of  passionate  voices,  of  clinging 
human  forms,  of  flowers  and  waters,  and  the  purple  and  gold  of  the 
sunrise  are  reflected  on  hills  illumined  with  pansies.  [I  know  not  if 
the  writer  recalled  George  Chapman's  "Enamelled  pansies  used  at 
nuptials  still"],  and  repeated  on  golden  human  flesh  and  human  hair. 
In  these  sacred  valleys  the  subtle  perfume  of  the  pansies  will  mingle 
with  the  divine  fragrance  of  healthy  naked  young  women  and  men  in 
the  spring  coupling.  You  and  I  shall  not  see  that,  but  we  may  help 
to  make  it  possible."  This  rhapsody  (an  unconscious  repetition  of 
Saint-Lambert's  at  Mile.  Quinault's  table  in  the  eighteenth  century) 
serves  to  illustrate  the  revolt  which  tends  to  take  place  against  the 
unnatural  and  artificial  degradation  of  the  sexual  act. 

In  some  parts  of  the  world  it  has  seemed  perfectly  natural  and 
reasonable  that  so  great  and  significant  an  act  as  that  of  coitus  should 
be  consecrated  to  the  divinity,  and  hence  arose  the  custom  of  prayer 
before   sexual  intercourse.    Thus  Zoroaster  ordained  that  a  married 


560  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

couple  should  pray  before  coitus,  and  after  the  act  they  should  say 
together:  "O,  Sapondomad,  I  trust  this  seed  to  thee,  preserve  it  for 
me,  for  it  is  a  man."  In  the  Gorong  Archipelago  it  is  customary  also 
for  husband  and  wife  to  pray  together  before  the  sexual  act  (Ploss  and 
Bartels,  Das  Weib,  Bd.  i,  Ch.  XVII).  The  civilized  man,  however,  has 
come  to  regard  his  stomach  as  the  most  important  of  his  organs,  and 
he  utters  his  conventional  grace,  not  before  love,  but  only  before  food. 
Even  the  degraded  ritual  vestiges  of  the  religious  recognition  of  coitus 
are  difficult  to  find  in  Europe.  We  may  perhaps  detect  it  among  the 
Spaniards,  with  their  tenacious  instinct  for  ritual,  in  the  solemn 
etiquette  with  which,  in  the  seventeenth  century,  it  was  customary, 
according  to  Madame  d'Aulnay,  for  the  King  to  enter  the  bedchamber  of 
the  Queen:  "He  has  on  his  slippers,  his  black  mantle  over  his  shoulder, 
his  shield  on  one  arm,  a  bottle  hanging  by  a  cord  over  the  other  arm 
( this  bottle  is  not  to  drink  from,  but  for  a  quite  opposite  purpose,  which 
you  will  guess).  With  all  this  the  King  must  also  have  his  great  sword 
in  one  hand  and  a  dark  lantern  in  the  other.  In  this  way  he  must 
enter,  alone,  the  Queen's  chamber"  (Madame  d'Aulnay,  Relation  du 
Voyage  d'Espagne,  1692,  vol.  iii,  p.  221). 

In  discussing  the  art  of  love  it  is  necessary  to  give  a  primary 
place  to  the  central  fact  of  coitus,  on  account  of  the  ignorance 
that  widely  prevails  concerning  it,  and  the  unfortunate  prejudices 
which  in  their  fungous  broods  nourish  in  the  noisome  obscurity 
around  it.  The  traditions  of  the  Christian  Church,  which  over- 
spread the  whole  of  Europe,  and  set  up  for  worship  a  Divine 
Virgin  and  her  Divine  Son,  both  of  whom  it  elaborately  dis- 
engaged from  personal  contact  with  sexuality,  effectually  crushed 
any  attempt  to  find  a  sacred  and  avowable  ideal  in  married 
love.  Even  the  Church's  own  efforts  to  elevate  matrimony  were 
negatived  by  its  own  ideals.  That  influence  depresses  our  civili- 
zation even  to-day.  When  Walt  Whitman  wrote  his  "Children  of 
Adam"  he  was  giving  imperfect  expression  to  conceptions  of  the 
religious  nature  of  sexual  love  which  have  existed  wholesomely 
and  naturally  in  all  parts  of  the  world,  but  had  not  yet  pene- 
trated the  darkness  of  Christendom  where  they  still  seemed 
strange  and  new,  if  not  terrible.  And  the  refusal  to  recognize 
the  solemnity  of  sex  had  involved  the  placing  of  a  pall  of  black- 
ness and  disrepute  on  the  supreme  sexual  act  itself.  It  was  shut 
out  from  the  sunshine  and  excluded  from  the  sphere  of  worship. 


ART    OF    LOVE.  561 

The  sexual  act  is  important  from  the  point  of  view  of  erotic 
art,  not  only  from  the  ignorance  and  prejudices  which  surround 
it,  but  also  because  it  has  a  real  value  even  in  regard  to  the 
psychic  side  of  married  life.  "These  organs/'  according  to  the 
oft-quoted  saying  of  the  old  French  physician,  Ambrose  Pare, 
"make  peace  in  the  household."  How  this  comes  about  we  see 
illustrated  from  time  to  time  in  Pepys's  Diary.  At  the  same  time, 
it  is  scarcely  necessary  to  say,  after  all  that  has  gone  before,  that 
this  ancient  source  of  domestic  peace  tends  to  be  indefinitely 
complicated  by  the  infinite  variety  in  erotic  needs,  which  become 
ever  more  pronounced  with  the  growth  of  civilization.1 

The  art  of  love  is,  indeed,  only  beginning  with  the  establish- 
ment of  sexual  intercourse.  In  the  adjustment  of  that  relation- 
ship all  the  forces  of  nature  are  so  strongly  engaged  that  under 
completely  favorable  conditions — which  indeed  very  rarely  occur 
in  our  civilization — the  knowledge  of  the  art  and  a  possible  skill 
in  its  exercise  come  almost  of  themselves.  The  real  test  of  the 
artist  in  love  is  in  the  skill  to  carry  it  beyond  the  period  when 
the  interests  of  nature,  having  been  really  or  seemingly  secured, 
begin  to  slacken.  The  whole  art  of  love,  it  has  been  well  said, 
lies  in  forever  finding  something  new  in  the  same  person.  The 
art  of  love  is  even  more  the  art  of  retaining  love  than  of  arousing 
it.  Otherwise  it  tends  to  degenerate  towards  the  Shakespearian 
lust, 

"Past  reason  hunted,  and  no  sooner  had, 
Past  reason  hated," 

though  it  must  be  remembered  that  even  from  the  most  strictly 
natural  point  of  view  the  transitions  of  passion  are  not  normally 
towards  repulsion  but  towards  affection.2 

The  young  man  and  woman  who  are  brought  into  the  com- 
plete unrestraint  of  marriage  after  a  prolonged  and  unnatural 
separation,  during  which  desire  and  the  satisfactions  of  desire 


1  This  has  been  pointed  out,  for  instance,  by  Rutgers,  "Sexuelle 
JDifferenzierung,"  Die  Neue  Generation,  Dec.,  1908. 

2  Thus,  among  the  Eskimo,  who  practice  temporary  wife-exchange, 
Rasmussen  states  that  "a  man  generally  discovers  that  his  own  wife 
is,  in  spite  of  all,  the  best." 


562  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

have  been  artificially  disconnected,  are  certainly  not  under  the 
best  conditions  for  learning  the  art  of  love.  They  are  tempted 
by  reckless  and  promiscuous  indulgence  in  the  intimacies  of 
marriage  to  fling  carelessly  aside  all  the  reasons  that  make  that 
art  worth  learning.  "There  are  married  people,"  as  Ellen  Key 
remarks,  "who  might  have  loved  each  other  all  their  lives  if  they 
had  not  been  compelled,  every  day  and  all  the  year,  to  direct 
their  habits,  wills,  and  inclinations  towards  each  other." 

All  the  tendencies  of  our  civilized  life  are,  in  personal 
matters,  towards  individualism;  they  involve  the  specialization, 
and  they  ensure  the  sacredness,  of  personal  habits  and  even 
peculiarities.  This  individualism  cannot  be  broken  down  sud- 
denly at  the  arbitrary  dictation  of  a  tradition,  or  even  by  the 
force  of  passion  from  which  the  restraints  have  been  removed.  Out 
of  deference  to  the  conventions  and  prejudices  of  their  friends, 
or  out  of  the  reckless  abandonment  of  young  love,  or  merely  out 
of  a  fear  of  hurting  each  other's  feelings,  young  couples  have 
often  plunged  prematurely  into  an  unbroken  intimacy  which  is 
even  more  disastrous  to  the  permanency  of  marriage  than  the 
failure  ever  to  reach  a  complete  intimacy  at  all.  That  is  one  of 
the  chief  reasons  why  most  writers  on  the  moral  hygiene  of  mar- 
riage nowadays  recommend  separate  beds  for  the  married  couple, 
if  possible  separate  bedrooms,  and  even  sometimes,  with  Ellen 
Key,  see  no  objection  to  their  living  in  separate  houses.  Cer- 
tainly the  happiest  marriages  have  often  involved  the  closest  and 
most  unbroken  intimacy,  in  persons  peculiarly  fitted  for  such 
intimacy.  It  is  far  from  true  that,  as  Bloch  has  affirmed, 
familiarity  is  fatal  to  love.  It  is  deadly  to  a  love  that  has  no 
roots,  but  it  is  the  nourishment  of  the  deeply-rooted  love.  Yet 
it  remains  true  that  absence  is  needed  to  maintain  the  keen  fresh- 
ness and  fine  idealism  of  love.  "Absence,"  as  Landor  said,  "is 
the  invisible  and  incorporeal  mother  of  ideal  beauty."  The  mar- 
ried lovers  who  are  only  able  to  meet  for  comparatively  brief 
periods  between  long  absences  have  often  experienced  in  these 
meetings  a  life-long  succession  of  honeymoons.1 

1  "I  have  always  held  with  the  late  Professor  Laycock,"  remarks 
Clouston  (Hygiene  of  Mind,  p.  214),  "who  was  a  very  subtle  student  of 


ART     OF    LOVE.  563 

There  can  be  no  question  that  as  presence  has  its  risks  for 
love,  so  also  has  absence.  Absence  like  presence,  in  the  end,  if 
too  prolonged,  effaces  the  memory  of  love,  and  absence,  further, 
by  the  multiplied  points  of  contact  with  the  world  which  it 
frequently  involves,  introduces  the  problem  of  jealousy,  although, 
it  must  be  added,  it  is  difficult  indeed  to  secure  a  degree  of  asso- 
ciation which  excludes  jealousy  or  even  the  opportunities  for 
motives  of  jealousy.  The  problem  of  jealousy  is  so  fundamental 
in  the  art  of  love  that  it  is  necessary  at  this  point  to  devote  to  it 
a  brief  discussion. 

Jealousy  is  based  on  fundamental  instincts  which  are  visible 
at  the  beginning  of  animal  life.  Descartes  defined  jealousy  as 
"a  kind  of  fear  related  to  a  desire  to  preserve  a  possession." 
Every  impulse  of  acquisition  in  the  animal  world  is  stimulated 
into  greater  activity  by  the  presence  of  a  rival  who  may  snatch 
beforehand  the  coveted  object.  This  seems  to  be  a  fundamental 
fact  in  the  animal  world ;  it  has  been  a  life-conserving  tendency, 
for,  it  has  been  said,  an  animal  that  stood  aside  while  its  fellows 
were  gorging  themselves  with  food,  and  experienced  nothing  but 
pure  satisfaction  in  the  spectacle,  would  speedily  perish.  But 
in  this  fact  we  have  the  natural  basis  of  jealousy.1 

It  is  in  reference  to  food  that  this  impulse  appears  first  and 
most  conspicuously  among  animals.     It  is  a  well-known  fact  that 

human  nature,  that  a  married  couple  need  not  be  always  together  to  be 
happy,  and  that  in  fact  reasonable  absences  and  partings  tend  towards 
ultimate  and  closer  union."  That  the  prolongation  of  passion  is  only 
compatible  with  absence  scarcely  needs  pointing  out;  as  Mary  Woll- 
stonecraft  long  since  said  {Rights  of  Woman,  original  ed.,  p.  61),  it  is 
only  in  absence  or  in  misfortune  that  passion  is  durable.  It  may  be 
added,  however,  that  in  her  love-letters  to  Imlay  she  wrote:  "I  have 
ever  declared  that  two  people  who  mean  to  live  together  ought  not  to 
be  long  separated." 

i  "Viewed  broadly,"  says  Arnold  L.  Gesell,  in  his  interesting  study 
of  "Jealousy"  (American  Journal  of  Psychology,  Oct.,  1906),  "jealousy 
seems  such  a  necessary  psychological  accompaniment  to  biological  be- 
havior, amidst  competitive  struggle,  that  one  is  tempted  to  consider  it 
genetically  among  the  oldest  of  the  emotions,  synoymous  almost  with  the 
will  to  live,  and  to  make  it  scarcely  less  fundamental  than  fear'or  anger. 
In  fact,  jealousy  readily  passes  into  anger,  and  is  itself  a  brand  of  fear. 
.  .  .  .  In  sociability  and  mutual  aid  we  see  the  other  side  of  the 
shield;  but  jealousy,  however  anti-social  it  may  be,  retains  a  function 
in  zoological  economy:  viz.,  to  conserve  the  individual  as  against  the 
group.     It  is  Nature's  great  corrective  for  the  purely  social  emotions." 


564  PSYCHOLOGY    OP    SEX. 

association  with  other  animals  induces  an  animal  to  eat  much 
more  than  when  kept  by  himself.  He  ceases  to  eat  from  hunger 
but  eats,  as  it  has  been  put,  in  order  to  preserve  his  food  from 
rivals  in  the  only  strong  box  he  knows.  The  same  feeling  is 
transferred  among  animals  to  the  field  of  sex.  And  further  in 
the  relations  of  dogs  and  other  domesticated  animals  to  their 
masters  the  emotion  of  jealousy  is  often  very  keenly  marked.1 

Jealousy  is  an  emotion  which  is  at  its  maximum  among 
animals,  among  savages,2  among  children,3  in  the  senile,  in  the 
degenerate,  and  very  specially  in  chronic  alcoholics.4  It  ist 
worthy  of  note  that  the  supreme  artists  and  masters  of  the 
human  heart  who  have  most  consummately  represented  the 
tragedy  of  jealousy  clearly  recognized  that  it  is  either  atavistic 
or  pathological;  Shakespeare  made  his  Othello  a  barbarian,  and 
Tolstoy  made  the  Pozdnischeff  of  his  Kreutzer  Sonata  a  lunatic. 
It  is  an  anti-social  emotion,  though  it  has  been  maintained  by 
some  that  it  has  been  the  cause  of  chastity  and  fidelity.  Gesell, 
for  instance,  while  admitting  its  anti-social  character  and 
accumulating  quotations  in  evidence  of  the  torture  and  disaster  it 
occasions,  seems  to  think  that  it  still  ought  to  be  encouraged  in 
order  to  foster  sexual  virtues.  Very  decided  opinions  have  been 
expressed  in  the  opposite  sense.  Jealousy,  like  other  shadows, 
says  Ellen  Key,  belongs  only  to  the  dawn  and  the  setting  of  love, 

1  Many  illustrations  are  brought  together  in  Gesell's  study  of 
"Jealousy." 

2  Jealousy  among  lower  races  may  be  disguised  or  modified  by 
tribal  customs.  Thus  Rasmussen  {People  of  the  Polar  "North,  p.  65) 
says  in  reference  to  the  Eskimo  custom  of  wife-exchange :  "A  man  once 
told  me  that  he  only  beat  his  wife  when  she  would  not  receive  other 
men.  She  would  have  nothing  to  do  with  anyone  but  him — and  that 
was  her  only  failing!"  Rasmussen  elsewhere  shows  that  the  Eskimo 
are  capable  of  extreme  jealousy. 

3  See,  e.g.,  Moll,  Sexualleben  des  Kindes,  p.  158;  cf.,  Gesell's  "Study 
of  Jealousy." 

4  Jealousy  is  notoriously  common  among  drunkards.  As  K.  Birn- 
baum  points  out  ("Das  Sexualleben  der  Alkokolisten,"  Sexual-Probleme, 
Jan.,  1909),  this  jealousy  is,  in  most  cases,  more  or  less  well-founded, 
for  the  wife,  disgusted  with  her  husband,  naturally  seeks  sympathy  and 
companionship  elsewhere.  Alcoholic  jealousy,  however,  goes  far  beyond 
its  basis  of  support  in  fact,  and  is  entangled  with  delusions  and 
hallucinations.  (See  e.g.  G.  Dumas,  "La  Logique  d'un  Dement,"  Revue 
Philosophique.  Feb.,  1908 ;  also  Stef anowski,  "Morbid  Jealousy,"  Alienist 
and  Neurologist,  July,  1893.) 


ART    OF    LOVE.  565 

and  a  man  should  feel  that  it  is  a  miracle,  and  not  his  right,  if 
the  sun  stands  still  at  the  zenith.1 

Even  therefore  if  jealousy  has  been  a  beneficial  influence  at 
the  beginning  of  civilization,  as  well  as  among  animals, — as  may 
probably  be  admitted,  though  on  the  whole  it  seems  rather  to  be 
the  by-product  of  a  beneficial  influence  than  such  an  influence 
itself, — it  is  still  by  no  means  clear  that  it  therefore  becomes  a 
desirable  emotion  in  more  advanced  stages  of  civilization.  There 
are  many  primitive  emotions,  like  anger  and  fear,  which  we  do 
not  think  it  desirable  to  encourage  in  complex  civilized  societies 
but  rather  seek  to  restrain  and  control,  and  even  if  we  are 
inclined  to  attribute  an  original  value  to  jealousy,  it  seems  to  be 
among  these  emotions  that  it  ought  to  be  placed. 

Miss  Clapperton,  in  discussing  this  problem  (Scientific  Meliorism*, 
pp.  129-137),  follows  Darwin  {Descent  of  Man,  Part  I,  Ch.  IV)  in  think- 
ing that  jealousy  led  to  "the  inculcation  of  female  virtue,"  but  she  adds 
that  it  has  also  been  a  cause  of  woman's  subjection,  and  now  needs  to 
be  eliminated.  "To  rid  ourselves  as  rapidly  as  may  be  of  jealousy  is 
essential;  otherwise  the  great  movement  in  favor  of  equality  of  sex 
will  necessarily  meet  with  checks  and  grave  obstruction." 

Ribot  (La  Logique  des  Sentiments,  pp.  75  et  seq.;  Essai  sur 
les  Passions,  pp.  91,  175),  while  stating  that  subjectively  the  estimate 
of  jealousy  must  differ  in  accordance  with  the  ideal  of  life  held,  con- 
siders that  objectively  we  must  incline  to  an  unfavorable  estimate 
"Even  a  brief  passion  is  a  rupture  in  the  normal  life ;  it  is  an  abnormal, 
if  not  a  pathological  state,  an  excrescence,  a  parasitism." 

Forel  (Die  Sexuelle  Frage,  Ch.  V)  speaks  very  strongly  in  the 
same  sense,  and  considers  that  it  is  necessary  to  eliminate  jealousy  by 
non-procreation  of  the  jealous.  Jealousy  is,  he  declares,  "the  worst  and 
unfortunately  the  most  deeply-rooted  of  the  'irradiations,'  or,  better,  the 
'contrast-reactions,'  of  sexual  love  inherited  from  our  animal  ancestors. 
An  old  German  saying,  'Eifersucht  ist  eine  Leidenschaft  die  mit  Eifer 

sucht    was   Leider    schafft,'    says   by    no    means    too    much 

Jealousy  is  a  heritage  of  animality  and  barbarism;  I  would  recall  this 
to  those  who,  under  the  name  of  'injured  honor,'  attempt  to  justify  it 
and  place  it  on  a  high  pedestal.  An  unfaithful  husband  is  ten  times 
more  to  be  wished  for  a  woman  than  a  jealous  husband.  .  .  .  We 
often  hear  of  'justifiable  jealousy.'  I  believe,  however,  that  there  is  no 
justifiable  jealousy;    it  is  always  atavistic  or  else  pathological;    at  the 


1  Ellen  Key,  TJeoer  Lieoe  und  EJie,  p.  335. 


566  PSYCHOLOGY    OP    SEX. 

best  it  is  nothing  more  than  a  brutal  animal  stupidity.  A  man  who, 
by  nature,  that  is  by  his  hereditary  constitution,  is  jealous  is  certain 
to  poison  his  own  life  and  that  of  his  wife.  Such  men  ought  on  no 
account  to  marry.  Both  education  and  selection  should  work  together 
to  eliminate  jealousy  as  far  as  possible  from  the  human  brain." 

Eric  Gillard  in  an  article  on  "Jealousy''  {Free  Review,  Sept., 
1896),  in  opposition  to  those  who  believe  that  jealousy  "makes  the 
home,"  declares  that,  on  the  contrary,  it  is  the  chief  force  that  unmakes 
the  home.  "So  long  as  egotism  waters  it  with  the  tears  of  sentiment 
and  shields  it  from  the  cold  blasts  of  scientific  inquiry,  so  long  will  it 
thrive.  But  the  time  will  come  when  it  will  be  burned  in  the  Garden 
of  Love  as  a  noxious  weed.  Its  mephitic  influence  in  society  is  too 
palpable  to  be  overlooked.  It  turns  homes  that  might  be  sanctuaries  of 
love  into  hells  of  discord  and  hate;  it  causes  suicides,  and  it  drives 
thousands  to  drink,  reckless  excesses,  and  madness.  Makes  the  home! 
One  of  your  married  men  friends  sees  a  probable  seducer  in  every  man 
who  smiles  at  his  wife;  another  is  jealous  of  his  wife's  women  acquain- 
tances; a  third  is  wounded  because  his  wife  shows  so  much  attention 
to  the  children.  Some  of  the  women  you  know  display  jealousy  of  every 
otber  woman,  of  their  husband's  acquaintances,  and  some,  of  his  very 
dog.  You  must  be  completely  monopolized  or  you  do  not  thoroughly 
love.  You  must  admire  no  one  but  the  person  with  whom  you  have 
immured  yourself  for  life.  Old  friendships  must  be  dissolved,  new 
friendships  must  not  be  formed,  for  fear  of  invoking  the  beautiful 
emotion  that  'makes  the  home.' " 

Even  if  jealousy  in  matters  of  sex  could  be  admitted  to  be  an 
emotion  working  on  the  side  of  civilized  progress,  it  must  still  be 
pointed  out  that  it  merely  acts  externally ;  it  can  have  little  or  no 
real  influence;  the  jealous  person  seldom  makes  himself  more 
lovable  by  his  jealousy  and  frequently  much  less  lovable.  The 
main  effect  of  his  jealousy  is  to  increase,  and  not  seldom  to 
excite,  the  causes  for  jealous}^,  and  at  the  same  time  to  encourage 
hypocrisy. 

All  the  circumstances,  accompaniments,  and  results  of  domestic 
jealousy  in  their  completely  typical  form,  are  well  illustrated  by  a  very 
serious  episode  in  the  history  of  the  Pepys  household,  and  have  been 
fully  and  faithfully  set  down  by  the  great  diarist.  The  offence — an 
embrace  of  his  wife's  lady-help,  as  she  might  now  be  termed — was  a 
slight  one,  but,  as  Pepys  himself  admits,  quite  inexcusable.  He  is  writ- 
ing, being  in  his  thirty-sixth  year,  on  the  25th  of  Oct.,  1668  (Lord's 
Day ) .     "After  supper,  to  have  my  hair  combed  by  Deb,  which  occasioned 


ART    OF    LOVE.  567 

the  greatest  sorrow  to  me  that  ever  I  knew  in  this  world,  for  my  wife, 

coming  up  suddenly,  did  find  me  embracing  the  girl I  was 

at  a  wonderful  loss  upon  it,  and  the  girl  also,  and  I  endeavored  to  put 
it  off,  but  my  wife  was  struck  mute  and  grew  angry Heart- 
ily afflicted  for  this  folly  of  mine So  ends  this  month,"  he 

writes  a  few  days  later,  "with  some  quiet  to  my  mind,  though  not  per- 
fect, after  the  greatest  falling  out  with  my  poor  wife,  and  through  my 
folly  with  the  girl,  that  ever  I  had,  and  I  have  reason  to  be  sorry  and 
ashamed  of  it,  and  more  to  be  troubled  for  the  poor  girl's  sake.  Sixth 
November.  Up,  and  presently  my  wife  up  with  me,  which  she  professedly 
now  do  every  day  to  dress  me,  that  I  may  not  see  Willet  [Deb],  and  do 
eye  me,  whether  I  cast  my  eye  upon  her,  or  no,  and  do  keep  me  from 
going  into  the  room  where  she  is.  Ninth  November.  Up,  and  I  did,  by 
a  little  note  which  I  flung  to  Deb,  advise  her  that  I  did  continue  to  deny 
that  ever  I  kissed  her,  and  so  she  might  govern  herself.  The  truth  is 
that  I  did  adventure  upon  God's  pardoning  me  this  lie,  knowing  how 
heavy  a  thing  it  would  be  for  me,  to  the  ruin  of  the  poor  girl,  and  next 
knowing  that  if  my  wife  should  know  all  it  would  be  impossible  for  her 
ever  to  be  at  peace  with  me  again,  and  so  our  whole  lives  would  be 
uncomfortable.  The  girl  read,  and  as  I  bid  her  returned  me  the  note, 
flinging  it  to  me  in  passing  by."  Next  day,  however,  he  is  "mightily 
troubled,"  for  his  wife  has  obtained  a  confession  from  the  girl  of  the 
kissing.  For  some  nights  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Pepys  are  both  sleepless,  with 
much  weeping  on  either  side.  Deb  gets  another  place,  leaving  on  the 
14th  of  November,  and  Pepys  is  never  able  to  see  her  before  she  leaves 
the  house,  his  wife  keeping  him  always  under  her  eye.  It  is  evident 
that  Pepys  now  feels  strongly  attracted  to  Deb,  though  there  is  no 
evidence  of  this  before  she  became  the  subject  of  the  quarrel.  On  the 
13th  of  November,  hearing  she  was  to  leave  next  day,  he  writes:  "The 
truth  is  I  have  a  good  mind  to  have  the  maidenhead  of  this  girl."  He 
was,  however,  the  "more  troubled  to  see  how  my  wife  is  by  this  means 
likely  forever  to  have  her  hand  over  me,  and  that  I  shall  forever  be  a 
slave  to  her — that  is  to  say,  only  in  matters  of  pleasure."  At  the  same 
time  his  love  for  his  wife  was  by  no  means  diminished,  nor  hers  for 
him.  "I  must  here  remark,"  he  says,  "that  I  have  lain  with  my  moher 
[i.e.,  muger,  wife]  as  a  husband  more  times  since  this  falling  out  than 
in,  I  believe,  twelve  months  before.  And  with  more  pleasure  to  her 
than  in  all  the  time  of  our  marriage  before."  The  next  day  was  Sun- 
day. On  Monday  Pepys  at  once  begins  to  make  inquiries  which  will 
put  him  on  the  track  of  Deb.  On  the  18th  he  finds  her.  She  gets  up 
into  the  coach  with  him,  and  he  kisses  her  and  takes  liberties  with  her, 
at  the  same  time  advising  her  "to  have  a  care  of  her  honor  and  to  fear 
God,"  allowing  no  one  else  to  do  what  he  has  done;  he  also  tells  her 
how  she  can  find  him  if  she  desires.    Pepys  now  feels  that  everything 


568  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

is  settled  satisfactorily,  and  his  heart  is  full  of  joy.  But  his  joy  is 
short-lived,  for  Mrs.  Pepys  discovers  this  interview  with  Deb  on  the 
following  day.  Pepys  denies  it  at  first,  then  confesses,  and  there  is  a 
more  furious  scene  than  ever.  Pepys  is  now  really  alarmed,  for  his 
wife  threatens  to  leave  him;  he  definitely  abandons  Deb,  and  with 
prayers  to  God  resolves  never  to  do  the  like  again.  Mrs.  Pepys  is  not 
satisfied,  however,  till  she  makes  her  husband  write  a  letter  to  Deb, 
telling  her  that  she  is  little  better  than  a  whore,  and  that  he  hates  her, 
though  Deb  is  spared  this,  not  by  any  stratagem  of  Pepys,  but  by  the 
considerateness  of  the  friend  to  whom  the  letter  was  entrusted  for 
delivery.  Moreover,  Mrs.  Pepys  arranges  with  her  husband  that,  in 
future,  whenever  he  goes  abroad  he  shall  be  accompanied  everywhere  by 
his  clerk.  We  see  that  Mrs.  Pepys  plays  with  what  appears  to  be 
triumphant  skill  and  success  the  part  of  the  jealous  and  avenging  wife, 
and  digs  her  little  French  heels  remorselessly  into  her  prostrate  husband 
and  her  rival.  Unfortunately,  we  do  not  know  what  the  final  outcome 
was,  for  a  little  later,  owing  to  trouble  with  his  eyesight,  Pepys  was 
compelled  to  bring  his  Diary  to  an  end.  It  is  evident,  however,  when 
we  survey  the  whole  of  this  perhaps  typical  episode,  that  neither  husband 
nor  wife  were  in  the  slightest  degree  prepared  for  the  commonplace  posi- 
tion into  which  they  were  thrown;  that  each  of  them  appears  in  a 
painful,  undignified,  and  humiliating  light;  that  as  a  result  of  it  the 
husband  acquires  almost  a  genuine  and  strong  affection  for  the  girl 
who  is  the  cause  of  the  quarrel;  and  finally  that,  even  though  he  is 
compelled,  for  the  time  at  all  events,  to  yield  to  his  wife,  he  remains 
at  the  end  exactly  what  he  was  at  the  beginning.  Nor  had  husband  or 
wife  the  very  slightest  wish  to  leave  each  other;  the  bond  of  marriage 
remained  firm,  but  it  had  been  degraded  by  insincerity  on  one  side  and 
the  jealous  endeavor  on  the  other  to  secure  fidelity  by  compulsion. 

Apart  altogether,  however,  from  the  question  of  its  effective- 
ness, or  even  of  the  misery  that  it  causes  to  all  concerned,  it  is 
evident  that  jealousy  is  incompatible  with  all  the  tendencies  of 
civilization.  We  have  seen  that  a  certain  degree  of  variation  is 
involved  in  the  sexual  relationship,  as  in  all  other  relationships, 
and  unless  we  are  to  continue  to  perpetuate  many  evils  and 
injustices,  that  fact  has  to  be  faced  and  recognized.  We  have 
also  seen  that  the  line  of  our  advance  involves  a  constant  increase 
in  moral  responsibility  and  self-government,  and  that,  in  its  turn, 
implies  not  only  a  high  degree  of  sincerity  but  also  the  recog- 
nition that  no  person  has  any  right,  or  indeed  any  power,  to  con- 
trol the  emotions  and  actions  of  another  person.    If  our  sun  of 


ART    OF    LOVE.  569 

love  stands  still  at  midday,  according  to  Ellen  Key's  phrase,  that 
is  a  miracle  to  be  greeted  with  awe  and  gratitude,  and  by  no 
means  a  right  to  be  demanded.  The  claim  of  jealousy  falls  with 
the  claim  of  conjugal  rights. 

It  is  quite  possible,  Bloch  remarks  (The  Sexual  Life  of  Our  Time, 
Ch.  X),  to  love  more  than  one  person  at  the  same  time,  with  nearly 
equal  tenderness,  and  to  be  honestly  able  to  assure  each  of  the  passion 
felt  for  her  or  him.  Bloch  adds  that  the  vast  psychic  differentiation 
involved  by  modern  civilization  increases  the  possibility  of  this  double 
love,  for  it  is  difficult  for  anyone  to  find  his  complement  in  a  single 
person,  and  that  this  applies  to  women  as  well  as  to  men. 

Georg  Hirth  likewise  points  out  (Wege  zur  Eeimat,  pp.  543-552) 
that  it  is  important  to  remember  that  women,  as  well  as  men,  can  love 
two  persons  at  the  same  time.  Men  flatter  themselves,  he  remarks,  with 
the  prejudice  that  the  female  heart,  or  rather  brain,  can  only  hold  one 
man  at  a  time,  and  that  if  there  is  a  second  man  it  is  by  a  kind  of 
prostitution.  Nearly  all  erotic  writers,  poets,  and  novelists,  even  phy- 
sicians and  psychologists,  belong  to  this  class,  he  says;  they  look  on 
a  woman  as  property,  and  of  course  two  men  cannot  "possess"  a  woman. 
(Regarding  novelists,  however,  the  remark  may  be  interpolated  that 
there  are  many  exceptions,  and  Thomas  Hardy,  for  instance,  frequently 
represents  a  woman  as  more  or  less  in  love  with  two  men  at  the  same 
time.)  As  against  this  desire  to  depreciate  women's  psychic  capacity, 
Hirth  maintains  that  a  woman  is  not  necessarily  obliged  to  be  untrue 
to  one  man  because  she  has  conceived  a  passion  for  another  man.  "To- 
day," Hirth  truly  declares,  "only  love  and  justice  can  count  as  honor- 
able motives  in  marriage.  The  modern  man  accords  to  the  beloved  wife 
and  life-companion  the  same  freedom  which  he  himself  took  before  mar- 
riage, and  perhaps  still  takes  in  marriage.  If  she  makes  no  use  of  it, 
as  is  to  be  hoped — so  much  the  better!  But  let  there  be  no  lies,  no 
deception;  the  indispensable  foundation  of  modern  marriage  is  bound- 
less sincerity  and  friendship,  the  deepest  trust,  affectionate  devotion, 
and  consideration.  This  is  the  best  safeguard  against  adultery.  .  .  •  . 
Let  him,  however,  who  is,  nevertheless,  overtaken  by  the  outbreak  of  it 
console  himself  with  the  undoubted  fact  that  of  two  real  lovers  the  most 
noble-minded  and  deep-seeing  friend  will  always  have  the  preference." 
These  wise  words  cannot  be  too  deeply  meditated.  The  policy  of  jealousy 
is  only  successful — when  it  is  successful — in  the  hands  of  the  man  who 
counts  the  external  husk  of  love  more  precious  than  the  kernel. 

It  seems  to  some  that  the  recognition  of  variations  in  sexual 
relationships,  of  the  tendency  of  the  monogamic  to  overpass  its 


570  PSYCHOLOGY    OP    SEX. 

self-imposed  bounds,  is  at  best  a  sad  necessity,  and  a  lamentable 
fall  from  a  high  ideal.  That,  however,  is  the  reverse  of  the  truth. 
The  great  evil  of  monogamy,  and  its  most  seriously  weak  point,  is 
its  tendency  to  self-concentration  at  the  expense  of  the  outer 
world.  The  devil  always  comes  to  a  man  in  the  shape  of  his  wife 
and  children,  said  Hinton.  The  family  is  a  great  social  influence 
in  so  far  as  it  is  the  best  instrument  for  creating  children  who 
will  make  the  future  citizens ;  but  in  a  certain  sense  the  family  is 
an  anti-social  influence,  for  it  tends  to  absorb  unduly  the  energy 
that  is  needed  for  the  invigoration  of  society.  It  is  possible, 
indeed,  that  that  fact  led  to  the  modification  of  the  monogamic 
system  in  early  developing  periods  of  human  history,  when  social 
expansion  and  cohesion  were  the  primary  necessities.  The 
family  too  often  tends  to  resemble,  as  someone  has  said,  the 
secluded  collection  of  grubs  sometimes  revealed  in  their  narrow 
home  when  we  casually  raise  a  flat  stone  in  our  gardens.  Great 
as  are  the  problems  of  love,  and  great  as  should  be  our  attention 
to  them,  it  must  always  be  remembered  that  love  is  not  a  little 
circle  that  is  complete  in  itself.  It  is  the  nature  of  love  to 
irradiate.  Just  as  family  life  exists  mainly  for  the  social  end  of 
breeding  the  future  race,  so  family  love  has  its  social  ends  in  the 
extension  of  sympathy  and  affection  to  those  outside  it,  and  even 
in  ends  that  go  beyond  love  altogether.1 

The  question  is  debated  from  time  to  time  as  to  how  far  it  is 
possible  for  men  and  women  to  have  intimate  friendships  with 
each  other  outside  the  erotic  sphere.2  There  can  be  no  doubt 
whatever  that  it  is  perfectly  possible  for  a  man  and  a  woman  to 
experience  for  each  other  a  friendship  which  never  intrudes  into 
the  sexual  sphere.  As  a  rule,  however,  this  only  happens  under 
special   conditions,   and  those   are   generally   conditions   which 


1  Sehrenipf  points  out  ("Von  Stella  zu  Kliirchen,"  Mutterschuts, 
1906,  Heft  7,  p.  264)  that  Goethe  strove  to  show  in  Egmont  that 
a  woman  is  repelled  by  the  love  of  a  man  who  knows  nothing  beyond 
his  love  to  her,  and  that  it  is  easy  for  her  to  devote  herself  to  the  man 
whose  aims  lie  in  the  larger  world  beyond  herself.  There  is  profound 
truth  in  this  view. 

2  A  discussion  on  "Platonic  friendship"  of  this  kind  by  several 
writers,  mostly  women,  whose  opinions  were  nearly  equally  divided,  may 
be  found,  for  instance,  in  the  Lady's  Realm,  March,  1900. 


ART    OF    LOVE.  571 

exclude  the  closest  and  most  intimate  friendship.  If,  as  we  have 
seen,  love  may  be  defined  as  a  synthesis  of  lust  and  friendship, 
friendship  inevitably  enters  into  the  erotic  sphere.  Just  as  sexual 
emotion  tends  to  merge  into  friendship,  so  friendship  between 
persons  of  opposite  sex,  if  young,  healthy,  and  attractive,  tends 
to  involve  sexual  emotion.  The  two  feelings  are  too  closely  allied 
for  an  artificial  barrier  .to  be  permanently  placed  between  them 
without  protest .J\len  who  offer  a  woman  friendship  usually  find 
that  it  is  not  received  with  much  satisfaction  except  as  the  first 
installment  of  a  warmer  emotion,  and  women  who  offer  friendship 
to  a  man  usually  find  that  he  responds  with  an  offer  of  love; 
very  often  the  "friendship"  is  from  the  first  simply  love  or 
flirtation  masquerading  under  another  name. 

"In  the  long  run,"  a  woman  writes  (in  a  letter  published  in 
Geschlecht  und  G-esellschaft,  Bd.  i,  Heft  7),  "the  senses  become  discon- 
tented at  their  complete  exclusion.  And  I  believe  that  a  man  can  only- 
come  into  the  closest  mi^tual  association  with  a  woman  by  whom,  con- 
sciously or  unconsciously,  he  is  physically  attracted.  He  cannot  enter 
into  the  closest  psychic  intercourse  with  a  woman  with  whom  he  could 
not  imagine  himself  in  physical  intercourse.  His  prevailing  wish  is  for 
the  possession  of  a  woman,  of  the  whole  woman,  her  soul  as  well  as  her 
body.  And  a  woman  also  cannot  imagine  an  intimate  relation  to  a  man 
in  which  the  heart  and  the  body,  as  well  as  the  mind,  are  not  involved. 
(Naturally  I  am  thinking  of  people  with  sound  nerves  and  healthy 
blood.)  Can  a  woman  carry  on  a  Platonic  relation  with  a  man  from 
year  to  year  Avithout  the  thought  sometimes  coming  to  her :  'Why  does 
he  never  kiss  me?  Have  I  no  charm  for  him?'  And  in  the  most  con- 
cealed corner  of  her  heart  will  it  not  happen  that  she  uses  that  word 
'kiss'  in  the  more  comprehensive  sense  in  which  the  French  sometimes 
employ  it?"  There  is  undoubtedly  an  element  of  truth  in  this  state- 
ment. The  frontier  between  erotic  love  and  friendship  is  vague,  and  an 
intimate  psychic  intercourse  that  is  sternly  debarred  from  ever  mani- 
festing itself  in  a  caress,  or  other  physical  manifestation  of  tender 
intimacy,  tends  to  be  constrained,  and  arouses  unspoken  and  unspeak- 
able thoughts  and  desires  which  are  fatal  to  any  complete  friendship. 

Undoubtedly  the  only  perfect  "Platonic  friendships"  are 
those  which  have  been  reached  through  the  portal  of  a  pre- 
liminary erotic  intimacy.  In  such  a  case  bad  lovers,  when  they 
have  resolutely  traversed  the  erotic  stage,  may  become  exceedingly 


572  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

good  friends.  A  satisfactory  friendship  is  possible  between 
brother  and  sister  because  they  have  been  physically  intimate  in 
childhood,  and  all  erotic  curiosities  are  absent.  The  most 
admirable  "Platonic  friendship"  may  often  be  attained  by  hus- 
band and  wife  in  whom  sympathy  and  affection  and  common 
interests  have  outlived  passion.  In  nearly  all  the  most  famous 
friendships  of  distinguished  men  and  women — as  we  know  in 
some  cases  and  divine  in  others — an  hour's  passion,  in  Sainte- 
Beuve's  words,  has  served  as  the  golden  key  to  unlock  the  most 
precious  and  intimate  secrets  of  friendship.1 

The  friendships  that  have  been  entered  through  the  erotic 
portal  possess  an  intimacy  and  retain  a  spiritually  erotic  char- 
acter which  could  not  be  attained  on  the  basis  of  a  normal  friend- 
ship between  persons  of  the  same  sex.  This  is  true  in  a  far 
higher  degree  of  the  ultimate  relationship,  under  fortunate  cir- 
cumstances, of  husband  and  wife  in  the  years  after  passion  has 
become  impossible.  They  have  ceased  to  be  passionate  lovers  but 
they  have  not  become  mere  friends  and  comrades.  More 
especially  their  relationship  takes  on  elements  borrowed  from  the 
attitude  of  child  to  parent,  of  parent  to  child.  Everyone  from 
his  first  years  retains  something  of  the  child  which  cannot  be 
revealed  to  all  the  world;  everyone  acquires  something  of  the 
guardian  paternal  or  maternal  spirit.  Husband  and  wife  are 
each  child  to  the  other,  and  are  indeed  parent  and  child  by  turn. 
And  here  still  the  woman  retains  a  certain  erotic  supremacy,  for 
she  is  to  the  last  more  of  a  child  than  it  is  ever  easy  for  the  man 
to  be,  and  much  more  essentially  a  mother  than  he  is  a  father. 

Groos  (Der  JEsthetische  Genuss,  p.  249)  has  pointed  out  that 
"love"  is  really  made  up  of  both  sexual  instinct  and  parental  instinct. 

"So-called  happy 'marriages,"  says  Professor  W.  Thomas  (Sex  and 
Society,  p.  246 ) ,  "represent  an  equilibrium  reached  through  an  extension 
of  the  maternal  interest  of  the  woman  to  the  man,  whereby  she  looks 
after   his    personal   needs    as   she   does   after    those  of   the   children — 


i  There  are  no  doubt  important  exceptions.  Thus  Merimee's 
famous  friendship  with  Mile.  Jenny  Dacquin,  enshrined  in  the  Lettres 
a  une  Inconnue,  was  perhaps  Platonic  throughout  on  Merim§e's  side, 
Mile.  Dacquin  adapting  herself  to  bis  attitude.  Cf.  A.  Lefebvre,  La 
Celeore  Inconnue  de  Merimee,  1908. 


ART    OF    LOVE.  573 

cherishing  him,  in  fact,  as  a  child — or  in  an  extension  to  woman  on  the 
part  of  man  of  the  nurture  and  affection  which  is  in  hia  nature  to  give 
to  pets  and  all  helpless  (and  preferably  dumb)  creatures." 

"When  the  devotion  in  the  tie  between  mother  and  son,"  a  woman 
writes,  "is  added  to  the  relation  of  husband  and  wife,  the  union  of  mar- 
riage is  raised  to  the  high  and  beautiful  dignity  it  deserves,  and  can 
attain  in  this  world.  It  comprehends  sympathy,  love,  and  perfect  under- 
standing, even  of  the  faults  and  weaknesses  of  both  sides."  "The  founda- 
tion of  every  true  woman's  love,"  another  woman  writes,  "is  a  mother's 
tenderness.  He  whom  she  loves  is  a  child  of  larger  growth,  although 
she  may  at  the  same  time  have  a  deep  respect  for  him."  ( See  also,  for 
similar  opinion  of  another  woman  of  distinguished  intellectual  ability, 
footnote  at  beginning  of  "The  Psychic  State  in  Pregnancy"  in  volume  v 
of  these  Studies,) 

It  is  on  the  basis  of  these  elemental  human  facts  that  the 
permanently  seductive  and  inspiring  relationships  of  sex  are  developed, 
and  not  by  the  emergence  of  personalities  who  combine  impossibly 
exalted  characteristics.  "The  task  is  extremely  difficult,"  says  Kisch  in 
his  Sexual  Life  of  Woman],  "but  a  clever  and  virtuous  modern  wife  must 
endeavor  to  combine  in  her  single  personality  the  sensuous  attractive- 
ness of  an  Aspasia,  the  chastity  of  a  Lucrece,  and  the  intellectual 
greatness  of  a  Cornelia."  And  in  an  earlier  century  we  are  told  in  the 
novel  of  La  Tia  Fingida,  which  has  sometimes  been  attributed  to  Cer- 
vantes, that  "a  woman  should  be  an  angel  in  the  street,  a  saint  in 
church,  beautiful  at  the  window,  honest  in  the  house,  and  a  demon  in 
bed."  The  demands  made  of  men  by  women,  on  the  other  hand,  have 
been  almost  too  lofty  to  bear  definite  formulation  at  all.  "Ninety-nine 
out  of  a  hundred  loving  women,"  says  Helene  Stocker,  "certainly  believe 
that  if  a  thousand  other  men  have  behaved  ignobly,  and  forsaken,  ill- 
used,  and  deceived  the  woman  they  love,  the  man  they  love  is  an  excep- 
tion, marked  out  from  all  other  men;  that  is  the  reason  they  love  him." 
It  may  be  doubted,  however,  if  the  great  lovers  have  ever  stood  very 
far  above  the  ordinary  level  of  humanity  by  their  possession  of  perfec- 
tion. They  have  been  human,  and  their  art  of  love  has  not  always 
excluded  the  possession  of  human  frailties;  perfection,  indeed,  even  if  it 
could  be  found,  would  furnish  a  bad  soil  for  love  to  strike  deep  roots  in. 

It  is  only  when  we  realize  the  highly  complex  nature  of  the 
elements  which  make  up  erotic  love  that  we  can  understand  how 
it  is  that  that  love  can  constitute  so  tremendous  a  revelation  and 
exert  so  profound  an  influence  even  in  men  of  the  greatest  genius 
and  intellect  and  in  the  sphere  of  their  most  spiritual  activity. 
It  is  not  merely  passion,  nor  any  conscious  skill  in  the  erotic  art, — 


574  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

important  as  these  may  be, — that  would  serve  to  account  for 
Goethe's  relationship  to  Frau  von  Stein,  or  Wagner's  to  Mathilde 
Wesendonck,  or  that  of  Eobert  and  Elizabeth  Browning  to  each 
other.1 

It  may  now  be  clear  to  the  reader  why  it  has  been  necessary 
in  a  discussion  of  the  sexual  impulse  in  its  relationship  to  society 
to  deal  with  the  art  of  love.  It  is  true  that  there  is  nothing  so 
intimately  private  and  personal  as  the  erotic  affairs  of  the 
individual.  Yet  it  is  equally  true  that  these  ?ffairs  lie  at  the 
basis  of  the  social  life,  and  furnish  the  conditions — good  or  bad  as 
the  case  may  be — of  that  procreative  act  which  is  a  supreme  con- 
cern of  the  State.  It  is  because  the  question  of  love  is  of  such 
purely  private  interest  that  it  tends  to  be  submerged  in  the  ques- 
tion of  breed.  We  have  to  realize,  not  only  that  the  question  of 
love  subserves  the  question  of  breed,  but  also  that  love  has  a 
proper,  a  necessary,  even  a  socially  wholesome  claim,  to  stand 
by  itself  and  to  be  regarded  for  its  own  worth. 

In  the  profoundly  suggestive  study  of  love  which  the  distinguished 
sociologist  Tarde  left  behind  at  his  death  (Archives  d'Anthropologie 
Criminelle,  loo  cit.),  there  are  some  interesting  remarks  on  this  point: 
"Society,"  he  says,  "has  been  far  more,  and  more  intelligently,  preoc- 
cupied with  the  problem  of  answering  the  'question  of  breed'  than  the 
'question  of  love.'  The  first  problem  fills  all  our  civil  and  commercial 
codes.  The  second  problem  has  never  been  clearly  stated,  or  looked  in 
the  face,  not  even  in  antiquity,  still  less  since  the  coming  of  Christianity, 
for  merely  to  offer  the  solutions  of  marriage  and  prostitution  is  mani- 
festly   inadequate.     Statesmen   have   only    seen    the    side    on   which    it 


i  The  love-letters  of  all  these  distinguished  persons  have  been  pub- 
lished. Rosa  Mayreder  (Zur  Kritik  der  Weiblichkeit,  pp.  229  et  seq.) 
discusses  the  question  of  the  humble  and  absolute  manner  in  which  even 
men  of  the  most  masculine  and  impetuous  genius  abandon  themselves 
to  the  inspiration  of  the  beloved  woman.  The  case  of  the  Brownings, 
who  have  been  termed  "the  hero  and  heroine  of  the  most  wonderful  love- 
story  that  the  world  knows  of,"  is  specially  notable;  (Ellen  Key  has 
written  of  the  Brownings  from  this  point  of  view  in  Menschen,  and 
reference  may  be  made  to  an  article  on  the  Brownings'  love-letters  in 
the  Edinburgh  Review,  April,  1899).  It  is  scarcely  necessary  to  add 
that  an  erotic  relationship  may  mean  very  much  to  persons  of  high 
intellectual  ability,  even  when  its  issue  is  not  happy;  of  Mary  Wollstone- 
craft,  one  of  the  most  intellectually  distinguished  of  women,  it  may  be 
said  that  the  letters  which  enshrine  her  love  to  the  worthless  Imlay  are 
among  the  most  passionate  and  pathetic  love-letters  in  English. 


ART    OF    LOVE.  575 

touches  population.  Hence  the  marriage  lawa.  Sterile  love  they  pro- 
fess to  disdain.  Yet  it  is  evident  that,  though  born  as  the  serf  of 
generation,  love  tends  by  civilization  to  be  freed  from  it.  In  place  of 
a  simple  method  of  procreation  it  has  become  an  end,  it  has  created 
itself  a  title,  a  royal  title.  Our  gardens  cultivate  flowers  that  are  all 
the  more  charming  because  they  are  sterile;  why  is  the  double  corolla 
of  love  held  more  infamous  than  the  sterilized  flowers  of  our  gardens?" 
Tarde  replies  that  the  reason  is  that  our  politicians  are  merely  ambitious 
persons  thirsting  for  power  and  wealth,  and  even  when  they  are  lovers 
they  are  Don  Juans  rather  than  Virgils.  "The  future,"  he  continues, 
"is  to  the  Virgilians,  because  if  the  ambition  of  power,  the  regal  wealth 
of  American  or  European  millionarism,  once  seemed  nobler,  love  now 
more  and  more  attracts  to  itself  the  best  and  highest  parts  of  the  soul, 
where  lies  the  hidden  ferment  of  all  that  is  greatest  in  science  and  art, 
and  more  and  more  those  studious  and  artist  souls  multiply  who,  intent 
on  their  peaceful  activities,  hold  in  horror  the  business  men  and  the 
politicians,  and  will  one  day  succeed  in  driving  them  back.  That 
assuredly  will  be  the  great  and  capital  revolution  of  humanity,  an  active 
psychological  revolution:  the  recognized  preponderance  of  the  medita- 
tive and  contemplative,  the  lover's  side  of  the  human  soul,  over  the 
feverish,  expansive,  rapacious,  and  ambitious  side.  And  then  it  will  be 
understood  that  one  of  the  greatest  of  social  problems,  perhaps  the  most 
arduous  of  all,  has  been  the  problem  of  love." 


CHAPTEE  XII. 

THE    SCIENCE   OF    PROCREATION. 

The  Relationship  of  the  Science  of  Procreation  to  the  Art  of  Love — 
Sexual  Desire  and  Sexual  Pleasure  as  the  Conditions  of  Conception — 
Reproduction  Formerly  Left  to  Caprice  and  Lust — The  Question  of  Pro- 
creation as  a  Religious  Question — The  Creed  of  Eugenics — Ellen  Key 
and  Sir  Francis  Galton — Our  Debt  to  Posterity — The  Problem  of  Re- 
placing Natural  Selection — The  Origin  and  Development  of  Eugenics — 
The  General  Acceptance  of  Eugenical  Principles  To-day — The  Two  Chan- 
nels by  Which  Eugenical  Principles  are  Becoming  Embodied  in  Practice — 
The  Sense  of  Sexual  Responsibility  in  Women — The  Rejection  of  Com- 
pulsory Motherhood — The  Privilege  of  Voluntary  Motherhood — Causes 
of  the  Degradation  of  Motherhood — The  Control  of  Conception — Now 
Practiced  by  the  Majority  of  the  Population  in  Civilized  Countries — The 
Fallacy  of  "Racial  Suicide" — Are  Large  Families  a  Stigma  of  Degenera- 
tion?— Procreative  Control  the  Outcome  of  Natural  and  Civilized  Prog- 
ress— The  Growth  of  Neo-Malthusian  Beliefs  and  Practices — Facultative 
Sterility  as  Distinct  from  Neo-Malthusianism — The  Medical  and  Hygienic 
Necessity  of  Control  of  Conception— Preventive  Methods — Abortion — The 
New  Doctrine  of  the  Duty  to  Practice  Abortion — How  Far  is  this  Justifi- 
able?— Castration  as  a  Method  of  Controlling  Procreation — Negative  Eu- 
genics and  Positive  Eugenics — The  Question  of  Certificates  for  Marriage 
— The  Inadequacy  of  Eugenics  by  Act  of  Parliament — The  Quickening 
of  the  Social  Conscience  in  Regard  to  Heredity — Limitations  to  the  En- 
dowment of  Motherhood — The  Conditions  Favorable  to  Procreation — 
Sterility — The  Question  of  Artificial  Fecundation — The  Best  Age  of 
Procreation — The  Question  of  Early  Motherhood — The  Best  Time  for 
Procreation — The  Completion  of  the  Divine  Cycle  of  Life. 

We  have  seen  that  the  art  of  love  has  an  independent  and 
amply  justifiable  right  to  existence  apart,  altogether,  from  pro- 
creation. Even  if  we  still  believed — as  all  men  must  once  have 
believed  and  some  Central  Australians  yet  believe1 — that  sexual 
intercourse  has  no  essential  connection  with  the  propagation  of 
the  race  it  would  have  full  right  to  existence.  In  its  finer  mani- 
festations as  an  art  it  is  required  in  civilization  for  the  full 

i  Spencer  and  Gillen,  Northern  Tribes  of  Central  Australia,  p.  330. 

(576) 


THE    SCIENCE    OF    PROCREATION.  577 

development  of  the  individual,  and  it  is  equally  required  for  that 
stability  of  relationships  which  is  nearly  everywhere  regarded  as 
a  demand  of  social  morality. 

When  we  now  turn  to  the  second  great  constitutional  factor 
of  marriage,  procreation,  the  first  point  we  encounter  is  that  the 
art  of  love  here  also  has  its  place.  In  ancient  times  the  sexual 
congruence  of  any  man  with  any  woman  was  supposed  to  be  so 
much  a  matter  of  course  that  all  questions  of  love  and  of  the 
art  of  love  could  be  left  out  of  consideration.  The  propagative 
act  might,  it  was  thought,  be  performed  as  impersonally,  as  per- 
functorily, as  the  early  Christian  Fathers  imagined  it  had  been 
performed  in  Paradise.  That  view  is  no  longer  acceptable.  It 
fails  to  commend  itself  to  men,  and  still  less  to  women.  We 
know  that  in  civilization  at  all  events — and  it  is  often  indeed  the 
same  among  savages — erethism  is  not  always  easy  between  two 
persons  selected  at  random,  nor  even  when  they  are  more 
specially  selected.  And  we  also  know,  on  the  authority  of  very 
distinguished  gynaecologists,  that  it  is  not  in  very  many  cases 
sufficient  even  to  effect  coitus,  it  is  also  necessary  to  excite 
orgasm,  if  conception  is  to  be  achieved. 

Many  primitive  peoples,  as  well  as  the  theologians  of  the  Middle 
Ages,  have  believed  that  sexual  excitement  on  the  woman's  part  is 
necessary  to  conception,  though  they  have  sometimes  mixed  up  that 
belief  with  false  science  and  mere  superstition.  The  belief  itself  is 
supported  by  some  of  the  most  cautious  and  experienced  modern  gynae- 
cologists. Thus,  Matthews  Duncan  (in  his  lectures  on  Sterility  in 
Women)  argued  that  the  absence  of  sexual  desire  in  women,  and  the 
absence  of  pleasure  in  the  sexual  act,  are  poAverful  influences  making 
for  sterility.  He  brought  forward  a  table  based  on  his  case-books,  show- 
ing that  of  nearly  four  hundred  sterile  women,  only  about  one-fourth 
experienced  sexual  desire,  while  less  than  half  experienced  pleasure  in 
the  sexual  act.  In  the  absence,  however,  of  a  corresponding  table  con- 
cerning fertile  women,  nothing  is  hereby  absolutely  proved,  and,  at  most, 
only  a  probability  established. 

Kisch,  more  recently  (in  his  Sexual  Life  of  Woman),  has  dealt 
fully  with  this  question,  and  reaches  the  conclusion  that  it  is  "ex- 
tremely probable"  that  the  active  erotic  participation  of  the  woman  in 
coitus  is  an  important  link  in  the  chain  of  conditions  producing  concep- 
tion.   It  acts,  he  remarks,  in  either  or  both  of  two  ways,  by  causing  reflex 

87 


578  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

changes  in  the  cervical  secretions,  and  so  facilitating  the  passage  of 
the  spermatozoa,  and  by  causing  reflex  erectile  changes  in  the  cervix 
itself,  with  slight  descent  of  the  uterus,  so  rendering  the  entrance  of 
the  semen  easier.  Kisch  refers  to  the  analogous  fact  that  the  first  oc- 
currence of  menstruation  is  favored  by  sexual  excitement. 

Some  authorities  go  so  far  as  to  assert  that,  until  voluptuous 
excitement  occurs  in  women,  no  impregnation  is  possible.  This  state- 
ment seems  too  extreme.  It  is  true  that  the  occurrence  of  impregnation 
during' sleep,  or  in  anaesthesia,  cannot  be  opposed  to  it,  for  we  know 
that  the  unconsciousness  of  these  states  by  no  means  prevents  the 
occurrence  of  complete  sexual  excitement.  We  cannot  fail,  however,  to 
connect  the  fact  that  impregnation  frequently  fails  to  occur  for  months 
and  even  years  after  marriage,  with  the  fact  that  sexual  pleasure  in 
coitus  on  the  wife's  part  also  frequently  fails  to  occur  for  a  similar 
period. 

"Of  all  human  instincts/'  Pinard  has  said,1  "that  of  repro- 
duction is  the  onty  one  which  remains  in  the  primitive  condition 
and  has  received  no  education.  We  procreate  to-day  as  they 
procreated  in  the  Stone  Age.  The  most  important  act  in  the  life 
of  man,  the  suhlimest  of  all  acts  since  it  is  that  of  his  reproduc- 
tion, man  accomplishes  to-day  with  as  much  carelessness  as  in 
the  age  of  the  cave-man."  And  though  Pinard  himself,  as  the 
founder  of  puericulture,  has  greatly  contributed  to  call  attention 
to  the  vast  destinies  that  hang  on  the  act  of  procreation,  there 
still  remains  a  lamentable  amount  of  truth  in  this  statement. 
"Future  generations,"  writes  Westermarck  in  his  great  history 
of  moral  ideas,2  "will  probably  with  a  kind  of  horror  look  back 
at  a  period  when  the  most  important,  and  in  its  consequences 
the  most  far-reaching,  function  which  has  fallen  to  the  lot  of 
man  was  entirely  left  to  individual  caprice  and  lust." 

We  are  told  in  his  Table  Talk,  that  the  great  Luther  was 
accustomed  to  say  that  God's  way  of  making  man  was  very 
foolish  ("sehr  narrisch"),  and  that  if  God  had  deigned  to  take 
him  into  His  counsel  he  would  have  strongly  advised  Him  to  make 
the  whole  human  race,  as  He  made  Adam,  "out  of  earth."  And 
certainly  if  applied  to  the  careless  and  reckless  manner  in  which 
procreation  in  Luther's  day,  as  still  for  the  most  part  in  our 

1  Academy  of  Medicine  of  Paris,  March  31,  1903. 

2  The  Origin  and  Development  of  the  Moral  Ideas,  vol.  ii,  p.  405. 


THE    SCIENCE    OF    PROCREATION.  579 

own,  was  usually  carried  out  there  was  sound  common  sense  in 
the  Keformer's  remarks.  If  that  is  the  way  procreation  is  to  be 
carried  on,  it  would  be  better  to  create  and  mould  every  human 
being  afresh  out  of  the  earth ;  in  that  way  we  could  at  all  events 
eliminate  evil  heredity.  It  was,  however,  unjust  to  place  the 
responsibility  on  God.  It  is  men  and  women  who  breed  the 
people  that  make  the  world  good  or  bad.  They  seek  to  put  the 
evils  of  society  on  to  something  outside  themselves.  They  see 
how  large  a  proportion  of  human  beings  are  defective,  ill-con- 
ditioned, anti-social,  incapable  of  leading  a  whole  and  beautiful 
human  life.  In  old  theological  language  it  was  often  said  that 
such  were  "children  of  the  Devil,"  and  Luther  himself  was  often 
ready  enough  to  attribute  the  evil  of  the  world  to  the  direct 
interposition  of  the  Devil.  Yet  these  ill-conditioned  people  who 
clog  the  wheels  of  society  are,  after  all,  in  reality  the  children  of 
Man.  The  only  Devil  whom  we  can  justly  invoke  in  this  matter 
is  Man. 

The  command  "Be  fruitful  and  multiply,"  which  the  ancient 
Hebrews  put  into  the  mouth  of  their  tribal  God,  was,  as  Crackan- 
thorpe  points  out,1  a  command  supposed  to  have  been  uttered 
when  there  were  only  eight  persons  in  the  world.  If  the  time 
should  ever  again  occur  when  the  inhabitants  of  the  world  could 
be  counted  on  one's  fingers,  such  an  injunction,  as  Crackanthorpe 
truly  observes,  would  again  be  reasonable.  But  we  have  to 
remember  that  to-day  humanity  has  spawned  itself  over  the 
world  in  hundreds  and  even  thousands  of  millions  of  creatures, 
a  large  proportion  of  whom,  as  is  but  too  obvious,  ought  never  to 
have  been  born  at  all,  and  the  voice  of  Jehovah  is  now  making 
itself  heard  through  the  leaders  of  mankind  in  a  very  different 
sense. 

It  is  not  surprising  that  as  this  fact  tends  to  become  gen- 
erally recognized,  the  question  of  the  procreation  of  the  race 
should  gain  a  new  significance,  and  even  tend  to  take  on  the 
character  of  a  new  religious  movement.  Mere  morality  can  never 
lead  us  to  concern  ourselves  with  the  future  of  the  race,  and  in 


l  Population  and  Progress,  p.  41. 


580  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

the  days  of  old,  men  used  to  protest  against  the  tendency  to 
subordinate  the  interests  of  religion  to  the  claims  of  "mere 
morality."  There  was  a  sound  natural  instinct  underlying  that 
protest,  so  often  and  so  vigorously  made  by  Christianity,  and 
again  revived  to-day  in  a  more  intelligent  form.  The  claim  of 
the  race  is  the  claim  of  religion.  We  have  to  beware  lest  we  sub- 
ordinate that  claim  to  our  moralities.  Moralities  are,  indeed,  an 
inevitable  part  of  our  social  order  from  which  we  cannot  escape; 
every  community  must  have  its  mores.  But  we  are  not  entitled 
to  make  a  fetich  of  our  morality,  sacrificing  to  it  the  highest 
interests  entrusted  to  us.  The  nations  which  have  done  so  have 
already  signed  their  own  death-warrant.1  From  this  point  of 
view,  the  whole  of  Christianity,  rightly  considered,  with  its  pro- 
found conviction  of  the  necessity  for  forethought  and  preparation 
for  the  life  hereafter,  has  been  a  preparation  for  eugenics,  a 
schoolmaster  to  discipline  within  us  a  higher  ideal  than  itself 
taught,  and  we  cannot  therefore  be  surprised  at  the  solidity  of  the 
basis  on  which  eugenical  conceptions  of  life  are  developing. 

The  most  distinguished  pioneers  of  the  new  movement  of  devotion 
to  the  creation  of  the  race  seem  independently  to  have  realized  its 
religious  character.  This  attitude  is  equally  marked  in  Ellen  Key  and 
Francis  Galton.  In  her  Century  of  the  Child  (English  translation, 
1909),  Ellen  Key  entirely  identifies  herself  with  the  eugenic  movement. 
"It  is  only  a  question  of  time,"  she  elsewhere  writes  (Ueber  Liebe  und 
Ehe,  p.  445),  "when  the  attitude  of  society  towards  a  sexual  union 
will  depend  not  on  the  form  of  the  union,  but  on  the  value  of  the 
children  created.  Men  and  women  will  then  devote  the  same  religious 
earnestness  to  the  psychic  and  physical  perfectioning  of  this  sexual 
task  as  Christians  have  devoted  to  the  salvation  of  their  souls." 

Sir  Francis  Galton,  writing  a  few  years  later,  but  without  doubt 
independently,  in  1905,  on  "Restrictions  in  Marriage,"  and  "Eugenics 
as  a  Factor  in  Religion"  (Sociological  Papers  of  the  Sociological  Society, 
vol.  ii,  pp.  13,  53),  remarks:  "Religious  precepts,  founded  on  the 
ethics  and  practice  of  older  days,  require  to  be  reinterpreted,  to  make 
them  conform  to  the  needs  of  progressive  nations.  Ours  are  already  so 
far  behind  modern  requirements  that  much  of  our  practice  and  our 
profession  cannot  be  reconciled  without  illegitimate  casuistry.    It  seems 


i  Cf.  Reibmayr,  Enticicklungsgeschichte  des  Talentes  und  Qenies, 
Bd.  II,  p.  31. 


THE    SCIENCE   OF    PROCREATION.  581 

to  me  that  few  things  are  more  needed  by  us  in  England  than  a 
revision  of  our  religion,  to  adapt  it  to  the  intelligence  and  needs  of  this 
present  time.  .  .  .  Evolution  is  a  grand  phantasmagoria,  but  it 
assumes  an  infinitely  more  interesting  aspect  under  the  knowledge  that 
the  intelligent  action  of  the  human  will  is,  in  some  small  measure, 
capable  of  guiding  its  course.  Man  has  the  power  of  doing  this  largely, 
so  far  as  the  evolution  of  humanity  is  concerned;  he  has  already  af- 
fected the  quality  and  distribution  of  organic  life  so  widely  that  the 
changes  on  the  surface  of  the  earth,  merely  through  his  disforestings 
and  agriculture,  would  be  recognizable  from  a  distance  as  great  as 
that  of  the  moon.  Eugenics  is  a  virile  creed,  full  of  hopefulness,  and 
appealing  to  many  of  the  noblest  feelings  of  our  nature." 

As  will  always  happen  in  every  great  movement,  a  few  fanatics 
have  carried  into  absurdity  the  belief  in  the  supreme  religious  impor- 
tance of  procreation.  Love,  apart  from  procreation,  writes  one  of  these 
fanatics,  Vacher  de  Lapouge,  in  the  spirit  of  some  of  the  early  Christian 
Fathers  (see  ante  p.509),  is  an  aberration  comparable  to  sadism  and 
sodomy.  Procreation  is  the  only  thing  that  matters,  and  it  must  be- 
come "a  legally  prescribed  social  duty"  only  to  be  exercised  by  care- 
fully selected  persons,  and  forbidden  to  others,  who  must,  by  necessity, 
be  deprived  of  the  power  of  procreation,  while  abortion  and  infanticide 
must,  under  some  circumstances,  become  compulsory.  Romantic  love 
will  disappear  by  a  process  of  selection,  as  also  will  all  religion  except 
a  new  form  of  phallic  worship  (G.  Vacher  de  Lapouge,  "Die  Crisis  der 
Sexuellen  Moral,"  Politisch  Anthropologische  Revue,  No.  8,  1908).  It 
is  sufficient  to  point  out  that  love  is,  and  always  must  be,  the  natural 
portal  to  generation.  Such  excesses  of  procreative  fanaticism  cannot  fail 
to  occur,  and  they  render  the  more  necessary  the  emphasis  which  has 
here  been  placed  on  the  art  of  love. 

"What  has  posterity  done  for  me  that  I  should  do  anything 
for  posterity?"  a  cynic  is  said  to  have  asked.  The  answer  is 
very  simple.  The  human  race  has  done  everything  for  him.  All 
that  he  is,  and  can  be,  is  its  creation;  all  that  he  can  do  is  the 
result  of  its  laboriously  accumulated  traditions.  It  is  only  by 
working  towards  the  creation  of  a  still  better  posterity,  that  he 
can  repay  the  good  gifts  which  the  human  race  has  brought  him.1 
Just  as,  within  the  limits  of  this  present  life,  many  who  have 
received  benefits  and  kindnesses  they  can  never  repay  to  the 

l  "The  debt  that  we  owe  to  those  who  have  gone  before  us,"  says 
Haycraft  (Darwinism  and  Race  Progress,  p.  160),  "we  can  only  repay 
to  those  who  come  after  us." 


582  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX-. 

actual  givers,  find  a  pleasure  in  vicariously  repaying  the  like  to 
others,  so  the  heritage  we  have  received  from  our  ascendents  we 
can  never  repay,  save  by  handing  it  on  in  a  better  form  to  our 
descendants. 

It  is  undoubtedly  true  that  the  growth  of  eugenical  ideals 
has  not  been,  for  the  most  part,  due  to  religious  feeling.  It  has 
been  chiefly  the  outcome  of  a  very  gradual,  but  very  comprehen- 
sive, movement  towards  social  amelioration,  which  has  been  going 
on  for  more  than  a  century,  and  which  has  involved  a  progressive 
effort  towards  the  betterment  of  all  the  conditions  of  life.  The 
ideals  of  this  movement  were  proclaimed  in  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury, they  began  to  find  expression  early  in  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury, in  the  initiation  of  the  modern  system  of  sanitation,  in  the 
growth  of  factory  legislation,  in  all  the  movements  which  have 
been  borne  onwards  by  socialism  hand  in  hand  with  individualism. 
The  inevitable  tendency  has  been  slowly  towards  the  root  of  the 
matter;  it  began  to  be  seen  that  comparatively  little  can  be 
effected  by  improving  the  conditions  of  life  of  adults ;  attention 
began  to  be  concentrated  on  the  child,  on  the  infant,  on  the 
embryo  in  its  mother's  womb,  and  this  resulted  in  the  fruitful 
movement  of  puericulture  inspired  by  Pinard,  and  finally  the 
problem  is  brought  to  its  source  at  the  point  of  procreation,  and 
the  regulation  of  sexual  selection  between  stocks  and  between 
individuals  as  the  prime  condition  of  life.  Here  we  have  the 
science  of  eugenics  which  Sir  Francis  Galton  has  done  so  much 
to  make  a  definite,  vital,  and  practical  study,  and  which  in  its 
wider  bearings  he  defines  as  "the  science  which  deals  with  those 
social  eugenics  that  influence,  mentally  or  physically,  the  racial 
qualities  of  future  generations/'  In  its  largest  aspect,  eugenics  is, 
as  Galton  has  elsewhere  said,  man's  attempt  "to  replace  Natural 
Selection  by  other  processes  that  are  more  merciful  and  not  less 
effective." 

In  the  last  chapter  of  his  Memories  of  My  Life  (1908),  on  "Race 
Improvement,"  Sir  Francis  Galton  sets  forth  the  origin  and  develop- 
ment of  his  conception  of  the  science  of  eugenics.  The  term,  "eugenics," 
he  first  used  in  1884,  in  his  Human  Faculty,  but  the  conception  dates 
from  1865,  and  even  earlier.     Galton  has  more  recently  discussed  the 


THE    SCIENCE    OF    TEOCREATION.  583 

problems  of  eugenics  in  papers  read  before  the  Sociological  Society 
(Sociological  Papers,  vols,  i  and  ii,  1905),  in  the  Herbert  Spencer 
Lecture  on  "Probability  the  Foundation  of  Eugenics,"  (1907),  and  else- 
where. Galton's  numerous  memoirs  on  this  subject  have  now  been 
published  in  a  collected  form  by  the  Eugenics  Education  Society,  which 
was  established  in  1907,  to  further  and  to  popularize  the  eugenical 
attitude  towards  social  questions;  The  Eugenics  Review  is  published 
by  this  Society.  On  the  more  strictly  scientific  side,  eugenic  studies  are 
carried  on  in  the  Eugenics  Laboratory  of  the  University  of  London, 
established  by  Sir  Francis  Galton,  and  now  working  in  connection  with 
Professor  Karl  Pearson's  biometric  laboratory,  in  University  College. 
Much  of  Professor  Pearson's  statistical  work  in  this  and  allied  direc- 
tions, is  the  elaboration  of  ideas  and  suggestions  thrown  out  by  Galton. 
See,  e.g.,  Karl  Pearson's  Robert  Boyle  Lecture,  "The  Scope  and  Impor- 
tance to  the  State  of  the  Science  of  National  Eugenics"  (1907).  Bio- 
metrika,  edited  by  Karl  Pearson  in  association  with  other  workers, 
contains  numerous  statistical  memoirs  on  eugenics.  In  Germany,  the 
Arcliiv  fur  Rassen  und  Gesellschafts-biologie,  and  the  Politisch-Anthro- 
pologische  Revue,  are  largely  occupied  with  various  aspects  of  such  sub- 
jects, and  in  America,  The  Popular  Science  Monthly  from  time  to  time, 
publishes  articles  which  have  a  bearing  on  eugenics. 

At  one  time  there  was  a  tendency  to  scoff,  or  to  laugh,  at  the 
eugenic  movement.  It  was  regarded  as  an  attempt  to  breed 
men  as  men  breed  animals,  and  it  was  thought  a  sufficiently  easy 
task  to  sweep  away  this  new  movement  with  the  remark  that  love 
laughs  at  bolts  and  bars.  It  is  now  beginning  to  be  better  under- 
stood. None  but  fanatics  dream  of  abolishing  love  in  order  to 
effect  pairing  by  rule.  It  is  merely  a  question  of  limiting  the 
possible  number  of  mates  from  whom  each  may  select  a  partner, 
and  that,  we  must  remember,  has  always  been  done  even  by 
savages,  for,  as  it  has  been  said,  "eugenics  is  the  oldest  of  the 
sciences."  The  question  has  merely  been  transformed.  Instead 
of  being  limited  mechanically  by  caste,  we  begin  to  see  that  the 
choice  of  sexual  mates  must  be  limited  intelligently  by  actual 
fitness.  Promiscuous  marriages  have  never  been  the  rule;  the 
possibility  of  choice  has  always  been  narrow,  and  the  most  primi- 
tive peoples  have  exerted  the  most  marked  self-restraint.  It  is 
not  so  merely  among  remote  races  but  among  our  own  European 
ancestors.     Throughout  the  whole  period  of  Catholic  supremacy 


584  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

the  Canon  law  multiplied  the  impediments  to  matrimony,  as  by 
ordaining  that  consanguinity  to  the  fourth  degree  (third  cous- 
ins), as  well  as  spiritual  relationship,  is  an  impediment,  and  by 
such  arbitrary  prohibitions  limited  the  range  of  possible  mates  at 
least  as  much  as  it  would  be  limited  by  the  more  reasonable  dic- 
tates of  eugenic  considerations. 

At  the  present  day  it  may  be  said  that  the  principle  of  the 
voluntary  control  of  procreation,  not  for  the  selfish  ends  of  the 
individual,  but  in  order  to  extinguish  disease,  to  limit  human 
misery,  and  to  raise  the  general  level  of  humanity  by  substituting 
the  ideal  of  quality  for  the  vulgar  ideal  of  mere  quantity,  is  now 
generally  accepted,  alike  by  medical  pathologists,  embryologists 
and  neurologists,  and  by  sociologists  and  moralists. 

It  would  be  easy  to  multiply  quotations  from  distinguished  au- 
thorities on  this  point.  Thus,  Metchnikoff  points  out  (Essais  Optimistes, 
p.  419)  that  orthobiosis  seems  to  involve  the  limitation  of  offspring  in 
the  fight  against  disease.  Ballantyne  concludes  his  great  treatise  on 
Antenanal  Pathology  with  the  statement  that  "Eugenics"  or  well- 
begetting,  is  one  of  the  world's  most  pressing  problems."  Dr.  Louise 
Robinovifcch,  the  editor  of  the  Journal  of  Mental  Pathology,  in  a  bril- 
liant and  thoughtful  paper,  read  before  the  Rome  Congress  of  Psy- 
chology in  1905,  well  spoke  in  the  same  sense:  "Nations  have  not 
yet  elevated  the  energy  of  genesie  function  to  the  dignity  of  an  energy. 
Other  energies  known  to  us,  even  of  the  meanest  grade,  have  long  since 
been  wisely  utilized,  and  their  activities  based  on  the  principle  of  the 
strictest  possible  economy.  This  economic  utilization  has  been  brought 
about,  not  through  any  enforcement  of  legislative  restrictions,  but  through 
steadily  progressive  human  intelligence.  Economic  handling  of  genesie 
function  will,  like  the  economic  function  of  other  energies,  come  about 
through  a  steady  and  progressive  intellectual  development  of  nations." 
"There  are  circumstances,"  says  C.  H.  Hughes,  ("Restricted  Procrea- 
tion," Alienist  and  Neurologist,  May,  1908),  "under  which  the  propa- 
gation of  a  human  life  may  be  as  gravely  criminal  as  the  taking  of  a 
life  already  begun." 

From  the  general  biological,  as  well  as  from  the  sociological  side, 
the  acceptance  of  the  same  standpoint  is  constantly  becoming  more 
general,  for  it  is  recognized  as  the  inevitable  outcome  of  movements 
which  have  long  been  in  progress. 

"Already,"  wrote  Haycraft  (Darwinism  and  Race  Progress,  p.  160), 
referring  to  the  law  for  the  prevention  of  cruelty  to  children,  "public 


THE    SCIENCE    OP    PROCREATION.  585 

opinion  has  expressed  itself  in  the  public  rule  that  a  man  and  woman, 
in  begetting  a  child,  must  take  upon  themselves  the  obligation  and  re- 
sponsibility of  seeing  that  ttiat  child  is  not  subjected  to  cruelty  and 
hardship.  It  is  but  one  step  more  to  say  that  a  man  and  a  woman 
shall  be  under  obligation  not  to  produce  children,  when  it  is  certain 
that,  from  their  want  of  physique,  they  will  have  to  undergo  suffering, 
and  will  keep  up  but  an  unequal  struggle  with  their  fellows." 
Professor  J.  Arthur  Thomson,  in  his  volume  on  Heredity  (1908), 
vigorously  and  temperately  pleads  (p.  528)  for  rational  methods  of 
eugenics,  as  specially  demanded  in  an  age  like  our  own,  when  the  unfit 
have  been  given  a  better  chance  of  reproduction  than  they  have  ever 
been  given  in  any  other  age.  Bateson,  again,  referring  to  the  growing 
knowledge  of  heredity,  remarks  {Mendel's  Principles  of  Heredity,  1909, 
p.  305)  :  "Genetic  knowledge  must  certainly  lead  to  new  conceptions 
of  justice,  and  it  is  by  no  means  impossible  that,  in  the  light  of  such 
knowledge,  public  opinion  will  welcome  measures  likely  to  do  more 
for  the  extinction  of  the  criminal  and  the  degenerate  than  has  been  ac- 
complished by  ages  of  penal  enactment."  Adolescent  youths  and  girls, 
said  Anton  von  Menger,  in  his  last  book,  the  pregnant  Neue  Sittenlehre 
(1905),  must  be  taught  that  the  production  of  children,  under  certain 
circumstances,  is  a  crime;  they  must  also  be  taught  the  voluntary  re- 
straint of  conception,  even  in  health;  such  teaching,  Menger  rightly 
added,  is  a  necessary  preliminary  to  any  legislation  in  this  direction. 

Of  recent  years,  many  books  and  articles  have  been  devoted  to 
the  advocacy  of  eugenic  methods.  Mention  may  be  made,  for  instance, 
of  Population  and  Progress  (1907),  by  Montague  Crackanthorpe,  Presi- 
dent of  the  Eugenics  Education  Society.  See  also,  Havelock  Ellis,  "Eu- 
genics and  St.  Valentine,"  Nineteenth  Century  and  After,  May,  1906. 
It  may  be  mentioned  that  nearly  thirty  years  ago,  Miss  J.  H.  Clapperton, 
in  her  Scientific  Meliorism  (1885,  Ch.  XVII),  pointed  out  that  the 
voluntary  restraint  of  procreation  by  Neo-Malthusian  methods,  apart 
from  merely  prudential  motives,  there  clearly  recognized,  is  "a  new  key 
to  the  social  position,"  and  a  necessary  condition  for  "national  re- 
generation." Professor  Karl  Pearson's  Groundwork  of  Eugenics,  (1909) 
is,  perhaps,  the  best  brief  introduction  to  the  subject.  Mention  may  also 
be  made  of  Dr.  Saleeby's  Parenthood  and  Race  Culture  (1909),  written 
in  a  popular  and  enthusiastic  manner. 

How  widely  the  general  principles  of  eugenics  are  now  accepted 
as  the  sound  method  of  raising  the  level  of  the  human  race,  was 
well  shown  at  a  meeting  of  the  Sociological  Society,  in  1905,  when, 
after  Sir  Francis  Galton  had  read  papers  on  the  question,  the  meeting 
heard  the  opinions  of  numerous  sociologists,  economists,  biologists,  and 
well-known  thinkers  in  various  lands,  who  were  present,  or  who  had 
sent  communications.     Some  twenty-one  expressed  more  or  less  unquali- 


586  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

fied  approval,  and  only  three  or  four  had  objections  to  offer,  mostly  on 
matters  of  detail  (Sociological  Papers,  published  by  the  Sociological 
Society,  vol.  ii,  1905). 

If  we  ask  by  what  channels  this  impulse  towards  the  control 
of  procreation  for  the  elevation  of  the  race  is  expressing  itself 
in  practical  life,  we  shall  scarcely  fail  to  find  that  there  are  at 
least  two  such  channels:  (1)  the  growing  sense  of  sexual  respon- 
sibility among  women  as  well  as  men,  and  (2)  the  conquest  of 
procreative  control  which  has  been  achieved  in  recent  years,  by 
the  general  adoption  of  methods  for  the  prevention  of  conception. 

It  has  already  been  necessary  in  a  previous  chapter  to  dis- 
cuss the  far-reaching  significance  of  woman's  personal  respon- 
sibility as  an  element  in  the  modification  of  the  sexual  life  of 
modem  communities.  Here  it  need  only  be  pointed  out  that 
the  autonomous  authority  of  a  woman  over  her  own  person,  in  the 
sexual  sphere,  involves  on  her  part  a  consent  to  the  act  of  pro- 
creation which  must  be  deliberate.  We  are  apt  to  think  that 
this  is  a  new  and  almost  revolutionary  demand;  it  is,  however, 
undoubtedly  a  natural,  ancient,  and  recognized  privilege  of 
women  that  they  should  not  be  mothers  without  their  own  con- 
sent. Even  in  the  Islamic  world  of  the  Arabian  Nights,  we  find 
that  high  praise  is  accorded  to  the  "virtue  and  courage"  of  the 
woman  who,  having  been  ravished  in  her  sleep,  exposed,  and  aban- 
doned on  the  highway,  the  infant  that  was  the  fruit  of  this 
involuntary  union,  "not  wishing/'  she  said,  "to  take  the  respon- 
sibility before  Allah  of  a  child  that  had  been  born  without  my 
consent."1  The  approval  with  which  this  story  is  narrated 
clearly  shows  that  to  the  public  of  Islam  it  seemed  entirely  just 
and  humane  that  a  woman  should  not  have  a  child,  except  by  her 
own  deliberate  will.  We  have  been  accustomed  to  say  in  later 
days  that  the  State  needs  children,  and  that  it  is  the  business  and 
the  duty  of  women  to  suppty  them.  But  the  State  has  no  more 
right  than  the  individual  to  ravish  a  woman  against  her  will. 
We  are  beginning  to  realize  that  if  the  State  wants  children  it 


1  Mardrus,  Les  Mille  Nuits,  vol.  xvi,  p.  158. 


THE    SCIENCE    OF    PROCREATION.  587 

must  make  it  agreeable  to  women  to  produce  them,  as  under 
natural  and  equitable  conditions  it  cannot  fail  to  be.  "The 
women  will  solve  the  question  of  mankind,"  said  Ibsen  in  one 
of  his  rare  and  pregnant  private  utterances,  "and  they  will  do  it 
as  mothers."  But  it  is  unthinkable  that  any  question  should 
ever  be  solved  by  a  helpless,  unwilling,  and  involuntary  act  which 
has  not  even  attained  to  the  dignity  of  animal  joy. 

It  is  sometimes  supposed,  and  even  assumed,  that  the  demand 
of  women  that  motherhood  must  never  be  compulsory,  means  that  they 
are  unwilling  to  be  mothers  on  any  terms.  In  a  few  cases  that  may 
be  so,  but  it  is  certainly  not  the  case  as  regards  the  majority  of 
sane  and  healthy  women  in  any  country.  On  the  contrary,  this  demand 
is  usually  associated  with  the  desire  to  glorify  motherhood,  if  not,  in- 
deed, even  with  the  thought  of  extending  motherhood  to  many  who  are 
to-day  shut  out  from  it.  "It  seems  to  me,''  wrote  Lady  Henry  Somerset, 
some  years  ago  ("The  Welcome  Child,  Arena,  April,  1895),  "that  life 
will  be  dearer  and  nobler  the  more  we  recognize  that  there  is  no  in- 
delicacy in  the  climax  and  crown  of  creative  power,  but,  rather,  that 
it  is  the  highest  glory  of  the  race.  But  if  voluntary  motherhood  is 
the  crown  of  the  race,  involuntary  compulsory  motherhood  is  the  very 
opposite.  .  .  .  Only  when  both  man  and  woman  have  learned  that 
the  most  sacred  of  all  functions  given  to  women  must  be  exercised  by 
the  free  will  alone,  can  children  be  born  into  the  world  who  have  in 
them  the  joyous  desire  to  live,  who  claim  that  sweetest  privilege  of 
childhood,  the  certainty  that  they  can  expand  in  the  sunshine  of  the 
love  which  is  their  due."  Ellen  Key,  similarly,  while  pointing  out 
(Ueber  Liebe  und  Ehe,  pp.  14,  265)  that  the  tyranny  of  the  old 
Protestant  religious  spirit  which  enjoined  on  women  unlimited  sub- 
mission to  joyless  motherhood  within  "the  whited  sepulchre  of  marriage" 
is  now  being  broken,  exalts  the  privileges  of  voluntary  motherhood,  while 
admitting  that  there  may  be  a  few  exceptional  cases  in  which  women 
may  withdraw  themselves  from  motherhood  for  the  sake  of  the  other 
demands  of  their  personality,  though,  "as  a  general  rule,  the  woman 
who  refuses  motherhood  in  order  to  serve  humanity,  is  like  a  soldier  who 
prepares  himself  on  the  eve  of  battle  for  the  forthcoming  struggle  by 
opening  his  veins."  Helene  Stocker,  likewise,  reckons  motherhood  as 
one  of  the  demands,  one  of  the  growing  demands  indeed,  which  women 
now  make.  "If,  to-day,"  she  says  (in  the  Preface  to  Liebe  und  die 
Frauen,  1906),  "all  the  good  things  of  life  are  claimed  even  for  women — 
intellectual  training,  pecuniary  independence,  a  happy  vocation  in  life, 
a  respected  social  position — and  at  the  same  time,  as  equally  matter-of- 


588  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

course,  and  equally  necessary,  marriage  and  child,  that  demand  no  longer 
sounds,  as  it  sounded  a  few  years  ago,  the  voice  of  a  preacher  in  the 
wilderness." 

The  degradation  to  which  motherhood  has,  in  the  eyes  of  many, 
fallen,  is  due  partly  to  the  tendency  to  deprive  women  of  any  voice  in 
the  question,  and  partly  to  what  H.  G.  Wells  calls  (Socialism  and  the 
Family,  1906)  "the  monstrous  absurdity  of  women  discharging  their 
supreme  social  function,  bearing  and  rearing  children,  in  their  spare 
time,  as  it  were,  while  they  'earn  their  living'  by  contributing  some 
half  mechanical  element  to  some  trivial  industrial  product."  It  would  be 
impracticable,  and  even  undesirable,  to  insist  that  married  women 
should  not  be  allowed  to  work,  for  a  work  in  the  world  is  good  for 
all.  It  is  estimated  that  over  thirty  per  cent,  of  the  women  workers 
in  England  are  married  or  widows  (James  Haslam,  Englishwoman,  June, 
1909),  and  in  Lancashire  factories  alone,  in  1901,  there  were  120,000 
married  women  employed.  But  it  would  be  easily  possible  for  the  State 
to  arrange,  in  its  own  interests,  that  a  woman's  work  at  a  trade  should 
always  give  way  to  her  work  as  a  mother.  It  is  the  more  undesirable  that 
married  women  should  be  prohibited  from  working  at  a  profession, 
since  there  are  some  professions  for  which  a  married  woman,  or,  rather, 
a  mother,  is  better  equipped  than  an  unmarried  woman.  This  is  notably 
the  case  as  regards  teaching,  and  it  would  be  a  good  policy  to  allow 
married  women  teachers  special  privileges  in  the  shape  of  increased  free 
time  and  leave  of  absence.  While  in  many  fields  of  knowledge  an  un- 
married woman  may  be  a  most  excellent  teacher,  it  is  highly  undesirable 
that  children,  and  especially  girls,  should  be  brought  exclusively  under 
the  educational  influence  of  unmarried  teachers. 

The  second  great  channel  through  which  the  impulse  towards 
the  control  of  procreation  for  the  elevation  of  the  race  is  entering 
into  practical  life  is  by  the  general  adoption,  by  the  educated 
classes  of  all  countries — and  it  must  be  remembered  that,  in  this 
matter  at  all  events,  all  classes  are  gradually  beginning  to  become 
educated — of  methods  for  the  prevention  of  conception  except 
when  conception  is  deliberately  desired.  It  is  no  longer  permis- 
sible to  discuss  the  validity  of  this  control,  for  it  is  an  accom- 
plished fact  and  has  become  a  part  of  our  modern  morality.  "If 
a  course  of  conduct  is  habitually  and  deliberately  pursued  by 
vast  multitudes  of  otherwise  well-conducted  people,  forming 
probably  a  majority  of  the  whole  educated  class  of  the  nation," 


THE    SCIENCE   OF    PROCREATION.  589 

as  Sidney  Webb  rightly  puts  it,  "we  must  assume  that  it  does  not 
conflict  with  their  actual  code  of  morality."1 

There  cannot  be  any  doubt  that,  so  far  as  England  is  concerned, 
the  prevention  of  conception  is  practiced,  from  prudential  or  other 
motives,  by  the  vast  majority  of  the  educated  classes.  This  fact  is  well 
within  the  knowledge  of  all  who  are  intimately  acquainted  with  the 
facts  of  English  family  life.  Thus,  Dr.  A.  W.  Thomas  writes  (British 
Medical  Journal,  Oct.  20,  1906,  p.  1066)  :  "From  my  experience  as  a 
general  practitioner,  I  have  no  hesitation  in  saying  that  ninety  per  cent. 
of  young  married  couples  of  the  comfortably-off  classes  use  preventives." 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  this  rough  estimate  appears  to  be  rather  under  than 
over  the  mark.  In  the  very  able  paper  already  quoted,  in  which  Sidney 
Webb  shows  that  "the  decline  in  the  birthrate  appears  to  be  much 
greater  in  those  sections  of  the  population  which  give  proofs  of  thrift 
and  foresight,"  that  this  decline  is  "principally,  if  not  entirely,  the 
result  of  deliberate  volition,"  and  that  "a  volitional  regulation  of  the 
marriage  state  is  now  ubiquitous  throughout  England  and  Wales, 
among,  apparently,  a  large  majority  of  the  population,"  the  results  are 
brought  forward  of  a  detailed  inquiry  carried  out  by  the  Fabian  Society. 
This  inquiry  covered  316  families,  selected  at  random  from  all  parts 
of  Great  Britain,  and  belonging  to  all  sections  of  the  middle  class.  The 
results  are  carefully  analyzed,  and  it  is  found  that  seventy-four  families 
were  unlimited,  and  two  hundred  and  forty-two  voluntarily  limited. 
When,  however,  the  decade  1890-99  is  taken  by  itself  as  the  typical 
period,  it  is  found  that  of  120  marriages,  107  were  limited,  and  only 
thirteen  unlimited,  while  of  these  thirteen,  five  were  childless  at  the  date 
of  the  return.  In  this  decade,  therefore,  only  seven  unlimited  fertile 
marriages  are  reported,  out  of  a  total  of  120. 

What  is  true  of  Great  Britain  is  true  of  all  other  civilized 
countries,  in  the  highest  degree  true  of  the  most  civilized  countries, 
and  it  finds  expression  in  the  well-known  phenomenon  of  the  decline 
of  the  birthrate.  In  modern  times,  this  movement  of  decline  began  in 
France,  producing  a  slow  but  steady  diminution  in  the  annual  num- 
ber of  births,  and  in  France  the  movement  seems  now  to  be  almost, 
or  quite,  arrested.  But  it  has  since  taken  place  in  all  other  progressive 
countries,  notably  in  the  United  States,  in  Canada,  in  Australia,  and 
in  New  Zealand,  as  well  as  in  Germany,  Austro-Hungary,  Italy,  Spain, 
Switzerland,  Belgium,  Holland,  Denmark,  Sweden,  and  Norway.  In 
England,   it  has  been  continuous  since   1877.     Of  the  great  countries, 

i  Sidney  Webb,  Popular  Science  Monthly,  1906,  p.  526  (previously 
published  in  the  London  Times,  Oct.  11,  16,  1906).  In  Ch.  IX  of  the 
present  volume  it  has  already  been  necessary  to  discuss  the  meaning  of 
the  term,  "morality." 


590  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

Russia  is  the  only  one  in  which  it  has  not  yet  taken  place,  and  among 
the  masses  of  the  Russian  population  we  find  less  education,  more 
poverty,  a  higher  deathrate,  and  a  greater  amount  of  disease,  than  in 
any  other  great,  or  even  small,  civilized  country. 

It  is  sometimes  said,  indeed,  that  the  decline  of  the  birthrate  is 
not  entirely  due  to  the  voluntary  control  of  procreation.  It  is  un- 
doubtedly true  that  certain  other  elements,  common  under  civilized  con- 
ditions, such  as  the  postponement"  of  marriage  hi  women  to  a  com- 
paratively late  age,  tend  to  diminish  the  size  of  the  family.  But  when 
all  such  allowances  have  been  made,  the  decline  is  still  found  to  be 
real  and  large.  This  has  been  shown,  for  instance,  by  the  statistical 
analyses  made  by  Arthur  Newsholme  and  T.  H.  C.  Stevenson,  and  by 
G.  Yule,  both  published  in  Journal  Royal  Statistical  Society,  April,  1906. 

Some  have  supposed  that,  since  the  Catholic  Church  forbids  in- 
complete sexual  intercourse,  this  movement  for  the  control  of  procreation 
will  involve  a  relatively  much  greater  increase  among  Catholic  than  among 
non-Catholic  populations.  This,  however,  is  only  correct  under  certain 
conditions.  It  is  quite  true  that  in  Ireland  there  has  been  no  fall  in 
the  birthrate,  and  that  the  fall  is  but  little  marked  in  those  Lan- 
cashire towns  which  possess  a  large  Irish  element.  But  in  Belgium, 
Italy,  Spain,  and  other  mainly  Catholic  countries,  the  decline  in  the 
birthrate  is  duly  taking  place.  What  has  happened  is  that  the  Church 
— always  alive  to  sexual  questions — has  realized  the  importance  of  the 
modern  movement,  and  has  adapted  herself  to  it,  by  proclaiming  to  her 
more  ignorant  and  uneducated  children  that  incomplete  intercourse  is 
a  deadly  sin,  while  at  the  same  time  refraining  from  making  inquiries 
into  this  matter  among  her  more  educated  members.  The  question  was 
definitely  brought  up  for  Papal  judgment,  in  1842,  by  Bishop  Bouvier 
of  Le  Mans,  who  stated  the  matter  very  clearly,  representing  to  the 
Pope  (Gregory  XVI)  that  the  prevention  of  conception  was  becoming 
very  common,  and  that  to  treat  it  as  a  deadly  sin  merely  resulted  in 
driving  the  penitent  away  from  confession.  After  mature  considera- 
tion, the  Curia  Sacra  Poenitentiaria  replied  by  pointing  out,  as  regards 
the  common  method  of  withdrawal  before  emission,  that  since  it  was 
due  to  the  wrong  act  of  the  man,  the  woman  who  has  been  forced  by 
her  husband  to  consent  to  it,  has  committed  no  sin.  Further,  the 
Bishop  was  reminded  of  the  wise  dictum  of  Liguori,  "the  most  learned 
and  experienced  man  in  these  matters,"  that  the  confessor  is  not 
usually  called  upon  to  make  inquiry  upon  so  delicate  a  matter  as  the 
deoitum  conjugale),  and,  if  his  opinion  is  not  asked,  he  should  be  silent 
(Bouvier,  Dissertatio  in  sextum  Decalogi  prwceptum;  supplementum  ad 
Tractatum  de  Matrimonio,  1849,  pp.  179-182;  quoted  by  Hans  Ferdy, 
Sexual-Probleme,  Aug.,  1908,  p.  498).  We  see,  therefore,  that,  among 
Catholic  as  well  as  among  non-Catholic  populations,  the  adoption  of  pre- 


THE    SCIENCE    OE    PROCREATION.  591 

ventive  methods  of  conception  follows  progress  and  civilization,  and  that 
the  general  practice  of  such  methods  by  Catholics  (with  the  tacit  consent 
of  the  Church)   is  merely  a  matter  of  time. 

From  time  to  time  many  energetic  persons  have  noisily 
demanded  that  a  stop  should  be  put  to  the  decline  of  the  birth- 
rate, for,  they  argue,  it  means  "race  suicide."  It  is  now  begin- 
ning to  be  realized,  however,  that  this  outcry  was  a  foolish  and 
mischievous  mistake.  It  is  impossible  to  walk  through  the  streets 
of  any  great  city,  full  of  vast  numbers  of  persons  who,  obviously, 
ought  never  to  have  been  born,  without  recognizing  that  the 
birthrate  is  as  yet  very  far  above  its  normal  and  healthy  limit. 
The  greatest  States  have  often  been  the  smallest  so  far  as  mere 
number  of  citizens  is  concerned,  for  it  is  quality  not  quantity  that 
counts.  And  while  it  is  true  that  the  increase  of  the  best  types 
of  citizens  can  only  enrich  a  State,  it  is  now  becoming  intolerable 
that  a  nation  should  increase  by  the  mere  dumping  down  of 
procreative  refuse  in  its  midst.  It  is  beginning  to  be  realized 
that  this  process  not  only  depreciates  the  quality  of  a  people  but 
imposes  on  a  State  an  inordinate  financial  burden. 

It  is  now  well  recognized  that  large  families  are  associated  with 
degeneracy,  and,  in  the  widest  sense,  with  abnormality  of  every  kind. 
Thus,  it  is  undoubtedly  true  that  men  of  genius  tend  to  belong  to 
very  large  families,  though  it  may  be  pointed  out  to  those  who  fear 
an  alarming  decrease  of  genius  from  the  tendency  to  the  limita- 
tion of  the  family,  that  the  position  in  the  family  most  often 
occupied  by  the  child  of  genius  is  the  firstborn.  (See  Havelock 
Ellis,  A  Study  of  British  Genius,  pp.  115-120).  The  insane,  the  idiotic, 
imbecile,  and  weak-minded,  the  criminal,  the  epileptic,  the  hysterical,  the 
neurasthenic,  the  tubercular,  all,  it  would  appear,  tend  to  belong  to 
large  families  (see  e.g.,  Havelock  Ellis,  op.  cit.,  p.  110;  Toulouse,  Les 
Causes  de  la  Folie,  p.  91;  Harriet  Alexander,  "Malthusianism  and 
Degeneracy,"  Alienist  and  Neurologist,  Jan.,  1901).  It  has,  indeed, 
been  shown  by  Heron,  Pearson,  and  Goring,  that  not  only  the  eldest- 
born,  but  also  the  second-born,  are  specially  liable  to  suffer  from  patho- 
logical defect  (insanity,  criminality,  tuberculosis ) .  There  is,  how- 
ever, it  would  seem,  a  fallacy  in  the  common  interpretation  of  this  fact. 
According  to  Van  den  Velden  (as  quoted  in  Sexual-Prooleme,  May,  1909, 
p.  381),  this  tendency  is  fully  counterbalanced  by  the  rising  mortality 
of  children  from  the  firstborn  onward.     The  greater  pathological  ten- 


592  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

dency  of  the  earlier  children  is  thus  simply  the  result  of  a  less  stringent 
selection  by  death.  So  far  as  they  show  any  really  greater  pathological 
tendency,  apart  from  this  fallacy,  it  is  perhaps  due  to  premature  mar- 
riage. There  is  another  fallacy  in  the  frequent  statement  that  the 
children  in  small  families  are  more  feeble  than  those  in  large  families. 
We  have  to  distinguish  between  a  naturally  small  family,  and  an  arti- 
ficially small  family.  A  family  which  is  small  merely  as  the  result  of 
the  feeble  procreative  energy  of  the  parents,  is  likely  to  be  a  feeble 
family;  a  family  which  is  small  as  the  result  of  the  deliberate  con- 
trol of  the  parents,  shows,  of  course,  no  such  tendency. 

These  considerations,  it  will  be  seen,  do  not  modify  the  tendency 
of  the  large  family  to  be  degenerate.  We  may  connect  this  phenomenon 
with  the  disposition,  often  shown  by  nervously  unsound  and  abnormal 
persons,  to  believe  that  they  have  a  special  aptitude  to  procreate  fine 
children.  "I  believe  that  everyone  has  a  special  vocation,"  said  a  man 
to  Marro  {La  Puberta,  p.  459)  ;  "I  find  that  it  is  my  vocation  to  beget 
superior  children."  He  begat  four, — an  epileptic,  a  lunatic,  a  dipso- 
maniac, and  a  valetudinarian, — and  himself  died  insane.  Most  people 
have  come  across  somewhat  similar,  though  perhaps  less  marked, 
cases  of  this  delusion.  In  a  matter  of  such  fateful  gravity  to  other 
human  beings,  no  one  can  safely  rely  on  his  own  unsupported  impres- 
sions. 

The  demand  of  national  efficiency  thus  corresponds  with  the 
demand  of  developing  humanitarianism,  which,  having  begun  by 
attempting  to  ameliorate  the  conditions  of  life,  has  gradually 
begun  to  realize  that  it  is  necessary  to  go  deeper  and  to  ameliorate 
life  itself.  For  while  it  is  undoubtedly  true  that  much  may  be 
done  by  acting  systematically  on  the  conditions  of  life,  the  more 
searching  analysis  of  evil  environmental  conditions  only  serves 
to  show  that  in  large  parts  they  are  based  in  the  human  organism 
itself  and  were  not  only  pre-natal,  but  pre-conceptional,  being 
involved  in  the  quality  of  the  parental  or  ancestral  organisms. 

Putting  aside,  however,  all  humanitarian  considerations,  the 
serious  error  of  attempting  to  stem  the  progress  of  civilization 
in  the  direction  of  procreative  control  could  never  have  occurred 
if  the  general  tendencies  of  zoological  evolution  had  been  under- 
stood, even  in  their  elements.  All  zoological  progress  is  from  the 
more  prolific  to  the  less  prolific;  the  higher  the  species  the  less 
fruitful  are  its  individual  members.  The  same  tendency  is 
found  within  the  limits  of  the  human  species,  though  not  in  an 


THE    SCIENCE   OF    PROCREATION.  593 

invariable  straight  line;  the  growth  of  civilization  involves  a 
diminution  in  fertility.  This  is  by  no  means  a  new  phenomenon; 
ancient  Eome  and  later  Geneva,  "the  Protestant  Eome,"  bear 
witness  to  it;  no  doubt  it  has  occurred  in  every  high  centre  of 
moral  and  intellectual  culture,  although  the  data  for  measuring 
the  tendency  no  longer  exist.  When  we  take  a  sufficiently  wide 
and  intelligent  survey,  we  realize  that  the  tendency  of  a  com- 
munity to  slacken  its  natural  rate  of  increase  is  an  essential 
phenomenon  of  all  advanced  civilization.  The  more  intelligent 
nations  have  manifested  the  tendency  first,  and  in  each  nation 
the  more  educated  classes  have  taken  the  lead,  but  it  is  only  a 
matter  of  time  to  bring  all  civilized  nations,  and  all  social  classes 
in  each  nation,  into  line.1  This  movement,  we  have  to  remem- 
ber— in  opposition  to  the  ignorant  outcry  of  certain  would-be 
moralists  and  politicians — is  a  beneficent  movement.  It  means 
a  greater  regard  to  the  quality  than  to  the  quantity  of  the 
increase ;  it  involves  the  possibility  of  combating  successfully  the 
evils  of  high  mortality,  disease,  overcrowding,  and  all  the  mani- 
fold misfortunes  which  inevitably  accompany  a  too  exuberant 
birthrate.  For  it  is  only  in  a  community  which  increases 
slowly  that  it  is  possible  to  secure  the  adequate  economic  adjust- 
ment and  environmental  modifications  necessary  for  a  sane  and 
wholesome  civic  and  personal  life.2  If  those  persons  who  raise 
the  cry  of  "race  suicide"  in  face  of  the  decline  of  the  birth- 
rate really  had  the  knowledge  and  intelligence  to  realize  the 
manifold  evils  which  they  are  invoking  they  would  deserve  to  be 
treated  as  criminals. 


i  Thus,  in  Paris,  in  1906,  in  the  rich  quarters,  the  birthrate  per 
1,000  inhabitants  was  19.09;  in  well-to-do  quarters,  22.51;  and  in 
poor  quarters,  29.70.  Here  we  see  that,  while  the  birthrate  falls  and 
rises  with  social  class,  even  among  the  poor  and  least  restrained  class 
the  birthrate  is  still  but  little  above  the  general  average  for  England, 
where  prevention  is  widespread,  and  very  considerably  lower  than  the 
average  (now  rapidly  falling)  in  Germany.  It  is  evident  that  even 
among  the  poor  class  there  is  a  process  of  leveling  up  to  the  higher 
classes  in  this  matter. 

2 1  have  developed  these  points  more  in  detail  in  two  articles  in 
the  Independent  Review,  November,  1903,  and  April,  1904.  See  also, 
Bushee,  "The  Declining  Birthrate  and  Its  Causes,"  Popular  Science 
Monthly,  Aug.,  1903. 


594  PSYCHOLOGY    OP    SEX. 

On  the  practical  side  a  knowledge  of  the  possibility  of  pre- 
venting conception  has,  doubtless,  never  been  quite  extinct  in 
civilization  and  even  in  lower  stages  of  culture,  though  it  has 
mostly  been  utilized  for  ends  of  personal  convenience  or  practiced 
in  obedience  to  conventional  social  rules  which  demanded  chastity, 
and  has  only  of  recent  times  been  made  subservient  to  the  larger 
interests  of  society  and  the  elevation  of  the  race.  The  theoretical 
basis  of  the  control  of  procreation,  on  its  social  and  economic,  as 
distinct  from  its  eugenic,  aspects,  may  be  said  to  date  from 
Malthus's  famous  Essay  on  Population,  first  published  in  1798, 
an  epoch-marking  book, — though  its  central  thesis  is  not  sus- 
ceptible of  actual  demonstration, — since  it  not  only  served  as  the 
starting-point  of  the  modern  humanitarian  movement  for  the 
control  of  procreation,  but  also  furnished  to  Darwin  (and 
independently  to  Wallace  also)  the  fruitful  idea  which  was 
finally  developed  into  the  great  evolutionary  theory  of  natural 
selection. 

Malthus,  however,  was  very  far  from  suggesting  that  the 
control  of  procreation,  which  he  advocated  for  the  benefit  of 
mankind,  should  be  exercised  by  the  introduction  of  preventive 
methods  into  sexual  intercourse.  He  believed  that  civilization 
involved  an  increased  power  of  self-control,  which  would  make  it 
possible  to  refrain  altogether  from  sexual  intercourse,  when  such 
self-restraint  was  demanded  in  the  interests  of  humanity.  Later 
thinkers  realized,  however,  that,  while  it  is  undoubtedly  true  that 
civilization  involves  greater  forethought  and  greater  self-control, 
we  cannot  anticipate  that  those  qualities  should  be  developed  to 
the  extent  demanded  by  Malthus,  especially  when  the  impulse 
to  be  controlled  is  of  so  powerful  and  explosive  a  nature. 

James  Mill  was  the  pioneer  in  advocating  Neo-Malthusian 
methods,  though  he  spoke  cautiously.  In  1818,  in  the  article 
"Colony"  in  the  supplement  to  the  Encyclopaedia  Britannica, 
after  remarking  that  the  means  of  checking  the  unrestricted 
increase  of  the  population  constitutes  "the  most  important  prac- 
tical problem  to  which  the  wisdom  of  the  politician  and  moralist 
can  be  applied,"  he  continued:  "If  the  superstitions  of  the 
nursery  were  discarded,  and  the  principle  of  utility  kept  steadily 


THE    SCIENCE    OP    PROCREATION.  595 

in  view,  a  solution  might  not  be  very  difficult  to  be  found." 
Four  years  later,  James  Mill's  friend,  the  Eadical  reformer, 
Francis  Place,  more  distinctly  expressed  the  thought  that  was 
evidently  in  Mill's  mind.  After  enumerating  the  facts  concern- 
ing the  necessity  of  self-control  in  procreation  and  the  evils  of 
early  marriage,  which  he  thinks  ought  to  be  clearly  taught,  Place 
continues :  "If  a  hundredth,  perhaps  a  thousandth  part  of  the 
pains  were  taken  to  teach  these  truths,  that  are  taken  to  teach 
dogmas,  a  great  change  for  the  better  might,  in  no  considerable 
space  of  time,  be  expected  to  take  place  in  the  appearance  and 
the  habits  of  the  people.  If,  above  all,  it  were  once  clearly  under- 
stood that  it  was  not  disreputable  for  married  persons  to  avail 
themselves  of  such  precautionary  means  as  would,  without  being 
injurious  to  health,  or  destructive  of  female  delicacy,  prevent 
conception,  a  sufficient  check  might  at  once  be  given  to  the 
increase  of  population  beyond  the  means  of  subsistence ;  vice  and 
misery,  to  a  prodigious  extent,  might  be  removed  from  society, 
and  the  object  of  Mr.  Malthus,  Mr.  Godwin,  and  of  every 
philanthropic  person,  be  promoted,  by  the  increase  of  comfort, 
of  intelligence,  and  of  moral  conduct,  in  the  mass  of  the  popula- 
tion. The  course  recommended  will,  I  am  fully  persuaded,  at 
some  period  be  pursued  by  the  people  even  if  left  to  themselves."1 
It  was  not  long  before  Place's  prophetic  words  began  to  be 
realized,  and  in  another  half  century  the  movement  was  affecting 
the  birthrate  of  all  civilized  lands,  though  it  can  scarcely  yet 
be  said  that  justice  has  been  done  to  the  pioneers  who  promoted 
it  in  the  face  of  much  persecution  from  the  ignorant  and  super- 
stitious public  whom  they  sought  to  benefit.  In  1831,  Eobert 
Dale  Owen,  the  son  of  Eobert  Owen,  published  his  Moral 
Physiology,  setting  forth  the  methods  of  preventing  conception. 
A  little  later  the  brothers  George  and  Charles  Drysdale  (born 
1825  and  1829),  two  ardent  and  unwearying  philanthropists, 
devoted  much  of  their  energy  to  the  propagation  of  Neo-Mal- 
thusian  principles.     George  Drysdale,   in    1854,   published  his 


i  Francis  Place,  Illustrations  and  Proofs  of  the  Principle  of  Popu- 
lation, 1822,  p.  165. 


596  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

Elements  of  Social  Science,  which  during  many  years  had  an 
enormous  circulation  all  over  Europe  in  eight  different  languages. 
It  was  by  no  means  in  every  respect  a  scientific  or  sound  work, 
but  it  certainly  had  great  influence,  and  it  came  into  the  hands 
of  many  who  never  saw  any  other  work  on  sexual  topics. 
Although  the  Neo-Malthusian  propagandists  of  those  days  often 
met  with  much  obloquy,  their  cause  was  triumphantly  vindicated 
in  1876,  when  Charles  Bradlaugh  and  Mrs.  Besant,  having  been 
prosecuted  for  disseminating  Neo-Malthusian  pamphlets,  the 
charge  was  dismissed,  the  Lord  Chief  Justice  declaring  that  so 
ill-advised  and  injudicious  a  charge  had  probably  never  before 
been  made  in  a  court  of  justice.  This  trial,  even  by  its  mere 
publicity  and  apart  from  its  issue,  gave  an  enormous  impetus  to 
the  Neo-Malthusian  movement.  It  is  well  known  that  the  steady 
decline  in  the  English  birthrate  begun  in  1877,  the  year  follow- 
ing the  trial.  There  could  be  no  more  brilliant  illustration  of 
the  fact,  that  what  used  to  be  called  "the  instruments  of 
Providence"  are  indeed  unconscious  instruments  in  bringing 
about  great  ends  which  they  themselves  were  far  from  either 
intending  or  desiring. 

In  1877,  Dr.  C.  R.  Drysdale  founded  the  Malthusian  League,  and 
edited  a  periodical,  The  Malthusian,  aided  throughout  by  his  wife,  Dr. 
Alice  Drysdale  Vickery.  He  died  in  1907.  (The  noble  and  pioneering 
work  of  the  Drysdales  has  not  yet  been  adequately  recognized  in  their 
own  country;  an  appreciative  and  well-informed  article  by  Dr.  Hermann 
Rohleder,  "Dr.  C.  R.  Drysdale,  Der  Hauptvortreter  der  Neumalthusian- 
isehe  Lehre,"  appeared  in  the  Zeitschrift  fur  Sexualwissenschaft,  March, 
1908).  There  are  now  societies  and  periodicals  in  all  civilized  countries 
for  the  propagation  of  Neo-Malthusian  principles,  as  they  are  still  com- 
monly called,  though  it  would  be  desirable  to  avoid  the  use  of  Malthus's 
name  in  this  connection.  In  the  medical  profession,  the  advocacy  of 
preventive  methods  of  sexual  intercourse,  not  on  social,  but  on  medical 
and  hygienic  grounds,  began  same  thirty  years  ago,  though  in  France, 
at  an  earlier  date,  Raciborski  advocated  the  method  of  avoiding  the 
neighborhood  of  menstruation.  In  Germany,  Dr.  Mensinga,  the  gynae- 
cologist, is  the  most  prominent  advocate,  on  medical  and  hygienic 
grounds,  of  what  he  terms  "facultative  sterility,"  which  he  first  put  for- 
ward about  1889.  In  Russia,  about  the  same  time,  artificial  sterility 
was  first  openly  advocated  by  the  distinguished  gynaecologist,  Professor 


THE    SCIENCE   OF    PROCREATION.  597 

Ott,  at  the  St.  Petersburg  Obstetric  and  Gynaecological  Society.  Such 
medical  recommendations,  in  particular  cases,  are  now  becoming  common. 

There  are  certain  cases  in  which  a  person  ought  not  to  marry  at 
all;  this  is  so,  for  instance,  when  there  has  been  an  attack  of  insanity; 
it  can  never  be  said  with  certainty  that  a  person  who  has  had  one 
attack  of  insanity  will  not  have  another,  and  persons  who  have  had  such 
attacks  ought  not,  as  Blandford  says  (Lumleian  Lectures  on  Insanity, 
British  Medical  Journal,  April  20,  1895),  "to  inflict  on  their  partner 
for  life,  the  anxiety,  and  even  danger,  of  another  attack."  There  are 
other  and  numerous  cases  in  which  marriage  may  be  permitted,  or  may 
have  already  taken  place,  under  more  favorable  circumstances,  but  where 
it  is,  or  has  become,  highly  desirable  that  there  should  be  no  children. 
This  is  the  case  when  a  first  attack  of  insanity  occurs  after  marriage, 
the  more  urgently  if  the  affected  party  is  the  wife,  and  especially  if  the 
disease  takes  the  form  of  puerperal  mania.  "What  can  be  more  la- 
mentable," asks  Blandford  {loo  cit.),  than  to  see  a  woman  break  down 
in  childbed,  recover,  break  down  again  with  the  next  child,  and  so  on, 
for  six,  seven,  or  eight  children,  the  recovery  between  each  being  less 
and  less,  until  she  is  almost  a  chronic  maniac?"  It  has  been  found, 
moreover,  by  Tredgold  {Lancet,  May  17,  1902),  that  among  children 
born  to  insane  mothers,  the  mortality  is  twice  as  great  as  the  ordinary 
infantile  mortality,  in  even  the  poorest  districts.  In  cases  of  unions 
between  persons  with  tuberculous  antecedents,  also,  it  is  held  by  many 
(e.g.,  by  Massalongo,  in  discussing  tuberculosis  and  marriage  at  the 
Tuberculosis  Congress,  at  Naples,  in  1900)  that  every  precaution  should 
be  taken  to  make  the  marriage  childless.  In  a  third  class  of  cases,  it  is 
necessary  to  limit  the  children  to  one  or  two;  this  happens  in  some 
forms  of  heart  disease,  in  which  pregnancy  has  a  progressively  deteriorat- 
ing effect  on  the  heart  (Kisch,  Therapcutische  Monatsheft,  Feb.,  1898, 
and  Sexual  Life  of  Woman;  Vinay,  Lyon  Medical,  Jan.  8,  1889);  in 
some  cases  of  heart  disease,  however,  it  is  possible  that,  though  there 
is  no  reason  for  prohibiting  marriage,  it  is  desirable  for  a  woman  not 
to  have  any  children  (J.  F.  Blacker,  "Heart  Disease  in  Relation  to 
Pregnancy,"  British  Medical  Journal,  May  25,  1907). 

In  all  such  cases,  the  recommendation  of  preventive  methods  of 
intercourse  is  obviously  an  indispensable  aid  to  the  physician  in  em- 
phasizing the  supremacy  of  hygienic  precautions.  In  the  absence  of 
such  methods,  he  can  never  be  sure  that  his  warnings  will  be  heard,  and 
even  the  observance  of  his  advice  would  be  attended  with  various  un- 
desirable results.  It  sometimes  happens  that  a  married  couple  agree, 
even  before  marriage,  to  live  together  without  sexual  relations,  but,  for 
various  reasons,  it  is  seldom  found  possible  or  convenient  to  maintain 
this  resolution  for  a  long  period. 


598  PSYCHOLOGY    OP    SEX. 

It  is  the  recognition  of  these  and  similar  considerations 
which  has  led — though  only  within  recent  years — on  the  one 
hand,  as  we  have  seen,  to  the  embodiment  of  the  control  of 
procreation  into  the  practical  morality  of  all  civilized  nations, 
and,  on  the  other  hand,  to  the  assertion,  now  perhaps  without 
exception,  by  all  medical  authorities  on  matters  of  sex  that  the 
use  of  the  methods  of  preventing  conception  is  under  certain 
circumstances  urgently  necessary  and  quite  harmless.1  It 
arouses  a  smile  to-day  when  we  find  that  less  than  a  century  ago 
it  was  possible  for  an  able  and  esteemed  medical  author  to 
declare  that  the  use  of  "various  abominable  means"  to  prevent 
conception  is  "based  upon  a  most  presumptuous  doubt  in  the 
conservative  power  of  the  Creator."2 

The  adaptation  of  theory  to  practice  is  not  yet  complete, 
and  we  could  not  expect  that  it  should  be  so,  for,  as  we  have  seen, 
there  is  always  an  antagonism  between  practical  morality  and 
traditional  morality.  From  time  to  time  flagrant  illustrations  of 
this  antagonism  occur.3  Even  in  England,  which  played  a 
pioneering  part  in  the  control  of  procreation,  attempts  are  still 
made — sometimes  in  quarters  where  we  have  a  right  to  expect  a 

1  See,  e.g.,  a  weighty  chapter  in  the  Sexualleben  und  Nervenleiden 
of  Lowenfeld,  one  of  the  most  judicious  authorities  on  sexual  pathology. 
Twenty-five  years  ago,  as  many  will  remember,  the  medical  student  was 
usually  taught  that  preventive  methods  of  intercourse  led  to  all  sorts 
of  serious  results.  At  that  time,  however,  reckless  and  undesirable 
methods  of  prevention  seem  to  have  been  more  prevalent  than  now. 

2  Michael  Ryan,  Philosophy  of  Marriage,  p.  9.  To  enable  "the 
conservative  power  of  the  Creator"  to  exert  itself  on  the  myriads  of 
germinal  human  beings  secreted  during  his  life-time  by  even  one  man, 
would  require  a  world  full  of  women,  while  the  corresponding  problem 
as  regards  a  woman  is  altogether  too  difficult  to  cope  with.  The  process 
by  which  life  has  been  built  up,  far  from  being  a  process  of  universal 
conservation,  has  been  a  process  of  stringent  selection  and  vast  de- 
struction; the  progress  effected  by  civilization  merely  lies  in  making 
this  blind  process  intelligent. 

3  Thus,  in  Belgium,  in  1908  (Sexual-Probleme,  Feb.,  1909,  p.  136), 
a  physician  (Dr.  Mascaux)  who  had  Tjeen  prominent  in  promoting  a 
knowledge  of  preventive  methods  of  conception,  was  condemned  to  three 
months  imprisonment  for  "offense  against  morality!"  In  such  a  case, 
Dr.  Helene  Stocker  comments  (Die  ~Neue  Generation,  Jan.,  1909,  p.  7), 
"morality"  is  another  name  for  ignorance,  timidity,  hypocrisy,  prudery, 
coarseness,  and  lack  of  conscience.  It  must  be  remembered,  however, 
in  explanation  of  this  iniquitous  judgment,  that  for  some  years  past 
the  clerical  party  has  been  politically  predominant  in  Belgium. 


THE    SCIENCE    OF    PROCREATION.  599 

better  knowledge — to  cast  discredit  on  a  movement  which,  since 
it  has  conquered  alike  scientific  approval  and  popular  practice, 
it  is  now  idle  to  call  in  question. 

It  would  be  out  of  place  to  discuss  here  the  various  methods 
which  are  used  for  the  control  of  procreation,  or  their  respective 
merits  and  defects.  It  is  sufficient  to  say  that  the  condom  or 
protective  sheath,  which  seems  to  be  the  most  ancient  of  all 
methods  of  preventing  conception,  after  withdrawal,  is  now 
regarded  by  nearly  all  authorities  as,  when  properly  used,  the 
safest,  the  most  convenient,  and  the  most  harmless  method.1 
This  is  the  opinion  of  Krafft-Ebing,  of  Moll,  of  Schrenck-Not- 
zing,  of  Lowenf  eld,  of  Forel,  of  Kisch,  of  Fiirbringer,  to  mention 
only  a  few  of  the  most  distinguished  medical  authorities.2 

There  is  some  interest  in  attempting  to  trace  the  origin  and  history 
of  the  condom,  though  it  seems  impossible  to  do  so  with  any  precision. 
It  is  probable  that,  in  a  rudimentary  form,  such  an  appliance  is  of 
great  antiquity.  In  China  and  Japan,  it  would  appear,  rounds  of  oiled 
silk  paper  are  used  to  cover  the  mouth  of  the  womb,  at  all  events,  by 
prostitutes.  This  seems  the  simplest  and  most  obvious  mechanical 
method  of  preventing  conception,  and  may  have  suggested  the  applica- 
tion of  a  sheath  to  the  penis  as  a  more  effectual  method.  In  Europe, 
it  is  in  the  middle  of  the  sixteenth  century,  in  Italy,  that  we  first  seem 
to  hear  of  such  appliances,  in  the  shape  of  linen  sheaths,  adapted  to  the 
shape  of  the  penis;  Fallopius  recommended  the  use  of  such  an  appli- 
ance. Improvements  in  the  manufacture  were  gradually  devised;  the 
csecum  of  the  lamb  was  employed,  and  afterwards,  isinglass.    It  appears 


1  It  has  been  objected  that  the  condom  cannot  be  used  by  the 
very  poorest,  on  account  of  its  cost,  but  Hans  Ferdy,  in  a  detailed 
paper  (Sexual-Probleme,  Dec,  1908),  shows  that  the  use  of  the  con- 
dom can  be  brought  within  the  means  of  the  very  poorest,  if  care  is 
taken  to  preserve  it  under  water  when  not  in  use.  Nystrom  (Sexual- 
Probleme,  Nov.,  1908,  p.  736)  has  issued  a  leaflet  for  the  benefit  of  his 
patients  and  others,  recommending  the  condom,  and  explaining  its  use. 

2  Thus,  Kisch,  in  his  Sexual  Life  of  Woman,  after  discussing  fully 
the  various  methods  of  prevention,  decides  in  favor  of  the  condom. 
Fiirbringer  similarly  (Senator  and  Kaminer,  Health  and  Disease  in  Re- 
lation to  Marriage,  vol.  i,  pp.  232  et  seq.)  concludes  that  the  condom  is 
"relatively  the  most  perfect  anti-conceptual  remedy."  Forel  {Die 
Sexuelle  Frage,  pp.  457  et  seq.)  also  discusses  the  question  at  length; 
any  aesthetic  objection  to  the  condom,  Forel  adds  (p.  544),  is  due  to 
the  fact  that  we  are  not  accustomed  to  it;  "eye-glasses  are  not  spe- 
cially aesthetic,  but  the  poetry  of  life  does  not  suffer  excessively  from 
their  use,  which,  in  many  cases,  cannot  be  dispensed  with." 


600  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

that  a  considerable  improvement  in  the  manufacture  took  place  in  the 
seventeenth  or  eighteenth  century,  and  this  improvement  was  generally 
associated  with  England.  The  appliance  thus  became  known  as  the  Eng- 
lish cape  or  mantle,  the  "capote  anglaise,"  or  the  "redingote  anglaise," 
and,  under  the  latter  name,  is  referred  to  by  Casanova,  in  the  middle  of 
the  eighteenth  century  ( Casanova,  Mem  oires,  ed.  Gamier,  vol.  iv,  p.  464 )  ; 
Casanova  never  seems,  however,  to  have  used  these  redingotes  himself, 
not  caring,  he  said,  "to  shut  myself  up  in  a  piece  of  dead  skin  in  order 
to  prove  that  I  am  perfectly  alive."  These  capotes — then  made  of  gold- 
beaters' skin — were,  also,  it  appears,  known  at  an  earlier  period  to 
Mme.  de  Sevigne,  who  did  not  regard  them  with  favor,  for,  in  one  of 
her  letters,  she  refers  to  them  as  "cuirasses  contre  la  volupte"  et  toiles 
d'arraignee  contre  le  mal."  The  name,  "condom,"  dates  from  the 
eighteenth  century,  first  appearing  in  France,  and  is  generally  con- 
sidered to  be  that  of  an  English  physician,  or  surgeon,  who  invented, 
or,  rather,  improved  the  appliance.  Condom  is  not,  however,  an  English 
name,  but  there  is  an  English  name,  Condon,  of  which  "condom"  may 
well  be  a  corruption.  This  supposition  is  strengthened  by  the  fact  that 
the  word  sometimes  actually  was  written  "condon."  Thus,  in  lines 
quoted  by  Bachaumont,  in  his  Diary  (Dec.  15,  1773),  and  supposed  to  be 
addressed  to  a  former  ballet  dancer  who  had  become  a  prostitute,  I 
find:— 

"Du  condon  cependant,  vous  connaissez  1'usage, 
*  #  *  * 

Le    condon,    c'est  la    loi,    ma    fille,    et    les    prophfetes!" 

The  difficulty  remains,  however,  of  discovering  any  Englishman  of 
the  name  of  Condon,  who  can  plausibly  be  associated  with  the  condom; 
doubtless  he  took  no  care  to  put  the  matter  on  record,  never  suspecting 
the  fame  that  would  accrue  to  his  invention,  or  the  immortality  that 
awaited  his  name.  I  find  no  mention  of  any  Condon  in  the  records 
of  the  College  of  Physicians,  and  at  the  College  of  Surgeons,  also, 
where,  indeed,  the  old  lists  are  very  imperfect,  Mr.  Victor  Plarr,  the 
librarian,  after  kindly  making  a  search,  has  assured  me  that  there  is 
no  record  of  the  name.  Other  varying  explanations  of  the  name  have 
been  offered,  with  more  or  less  assurance,  though  usually  without  any 
proofs.  Thus,  Hyrtl  (Handbuch  der  Topographischen  Anatomic,  7th  ed., 
vol.  ii,  p.  212)  states  that  the  condom  was  originally  called  gondom, 
from  the  name  of  the  English  discoverer,  a  Cavalier  of  Charles  IPs  Court, 
who  first  prepared  it  from  the  amnion  of  the  sheep;  Gondom  is,  how- 
ever, no  more  an  English  name  than  Condom.  There  happens  to  be  a 
French  town,  in  Gascony,  called  Condom,  and  Bloch  suggests,  without 
any  evidence,  that  this  furnished  the  name;  if  so,  however,  it  is  improb- 
able that  it  would  have  been  unknown  in  France.     Finally,  Hans  Ferdy 


THE   SCIENCE   OF    PROCREATION.  601 

considers  that  it  is  derived  from  "condus" — that  which  preserves'—and, 
in  accordance  with  his  theory,  he  terms  the  condom  a  condus. 

The  early  history  of  the  condom  is  briefly  discussed  by  various 
writers,  as  by  Proksch,  Die  Yorbauung  der  Venerischen  KranJcheiten, 
p.  48;  Bloch,  Sexual  Life  of  Our  Time,  Clis.  XV  and  XXVIII;  Cabanes, 
Indiscretions  de  VEistoire,  p.  121,  etc. 

The  control  of  procreation  by  the  prevention  of  conception 
has,  we  have  seen,  become  a  part  of  the  morality  of  civilized 
peoples.  There  is  another  method,  not  indeed  for  preventing 
conception,  but  for  limiting  offspring,  which  is  of  much  more 
ancient  appearance  in  the  world,  though  it  has  at  different  times 
been  very  differently  viewed  and  still  arouses  widely  opposing 
opinions.     This  is  the  method  of  abortion. 

While  the  practice  of  abortion  has  by  no  means,  like  the 
practice  of  preventing  conception,  become  accepted  in  civilization, 
it  scarcely  appears  to  excite  profound  repulsion  in  a  large  propor- 
tion of  the  population  of  civilized  countries.  The  majority  of 
women,  not  excluding  educated  and  highly  moral  women,  who 
become  pregnant  against  their  wish  contemplate  the  possibility 
of  procuring  abortion  without  the  slightest  twinge  of  conscience, 
and  often  are  not  even  aware  of  the  usual  professional  attitude  of 
the  Church,  the  law,  and  medicine  regarding  abortion.  Prob- 
ably all  doctors  have  encountered  this  fact,  and  even  so  dis- 
tinguished and  correct  a  medico-legist  as  Brouardel  stated1  that 
he  had  been  not  infrequently  solicited  to  procure  abortion,  for 
themselves  or  their  wet-nurses,  by  ladies  who  looked  on  it  as  a 
perfectly  natural  thing,  and  had  not  the  least  suspicion  that  the 
law  regarded  the  deed  as  a  crime. 

It  is  not,  therefore,  surprising  that  abortion  is  exceedingly 
common  in  all  civilized  and  progressive  countries.  It  cannot, 
indeed,  unfortunately,  be  said  that  abortion  has  been  conducted 
in  accordance  with  eugenic  considerations,  nor  has  it  often 
been  so  much  as  advocated  from  the  eugenic  standpoint.  But 
in  numerous  classes  of  cases  of  undesired  pregnancy,  occur- 
ring in  women  of  character  and  energy,  not  accustomed  to  submit 
tamely  to  conditions  they  may  not  have  sought,  and  in  any  case 

1  L'Avortement,  p.  43. 


602  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

consider  undesirable,  abortion  is  frequently  resorted  to.  It  is 
usual  to  regard  the  United  States  as  a  land  in  which  the  practice 
especially  flourishes,  and  certainly  a  land  in  which  the  ideal  of 
chastity  for  unmarried  women,  of  freedom  for  married  women, 
of  independence  for  all,  is  actively  followed  cannot  fail  to  be 
favorable  to  the  practice  of  abortion.  But  the  way  in  which  the 
prevalence  of  abortion  is  proclaimed  in  the  United  States  is 
probably  in  large  part  due  to  the  honesty  of  the  Americans  in 
setting  forth,  and  endeavoring  to  correct,  what,  rightly  or  wrongly, 
they  regard  as  social  defects,  and  may  not  indicate  any  real 
pre-eminence  in  the  practice.  Comparative  statistics  are  diffi- 
cult, and  it  is  certainly  true  that  abortion  is  extremely  common 
in  England,  in  France,  and  in  Germany.  It  is  probable  that  any 
national  differences  may  be  accounted  for  by  differences  in  gen- 
eral social  habits  and  ideals.  Thus  in  Germany,  where  con- 
siderable sexual  freedom  is  permitted  to  unmarried  women  and 
married  women  are  very  domesticated,  abortion  may  be  less  fre- 
quent than  in  France  where  purity  is  stringently  demanded  from 
the  young  girl,  while  the  married  woman  demands  freedom  for 
work  and  for  pleasure.  But  such  national  differences,  if  they 
exist,  are  tending  to  be  levelled  down,  and  charges  of  criminal 
abortion  are  constantly  becoming  more  common  in  Germany; 
though  this  increase,  again,  may  be  merely  due  to  greater  zeal 
in  pursuing  the  offence. 

Brouardel  (op.  cit.,  p.  39)  quotes  the  opinion  that,  in  New  York, 
only  ,one  in  every  thousand  abortions  is  discovered.  Dr.  J.  F.  Scott 
(The  Sexual  Instinct,  Ch.  VIII),  who  is  himself  strongly  opposed  to 
the  practice,  considers  that  in  America,  the  custom  of  procuring  abortion 
has  to-day  reached  "such  vast  proportions  as  to  be  almost  beyond  be- 
lief," while  "countless  thousands"  of  cases  are  never  reported.  "It  has 
increased  so  rapidly  in  our  day  and  generation,"  Scott  states,  "that  it 
has  created  surprise  and  alarm  in  the  minds  of  all  conscientious  per- 
sons who  are  informed  of  the  extent  to  which  it  is  carried."  (The  as- 
sumption that  those  who  approve  of  abortion  are  necessarily  not  "con- 
scientious persons"  is,  as  we  shall  see,  mistaken.)  The  change  has 
taken  place  since  1840.  The  Michigan  Special  Committee  on  Criminal 
Abortion  reported  in  1881  that,  from  correspondence  with  nearly  one 
hundred  physicians,  it  appeared  that  there  came  to  the  knowledge  of 


THE    SCIENCE   OE    PROCREATION.  603 

the  profession  seventeen  abortions  to  every  one  hundred  pregnancies; 
to  these,  the  committee  believe,  may  be  added  as  many  more  that  never 
came  to  the  physician's  knowledge.  The  committee  further  quoted, 
though  without  endorsement,  the  opinion  of  a  physician  who  believed 
that  a  change  is  now  coming  over  public  feeling  in  regard  to  the 
abortionist,  who  is  beginning  to  be  regarded  in  America  as  a  useful  mem- 
ber of  society,  and  even  a  benefactor. 

In  England,  also,  there  appears  to  have  been  a  marked  increase 
of  abortion  during  recent  years,  perhaps  specially  marked  among  the 
poor  and  hard-working  classes.  A  writer  in  the  British  Medical  Journal 
(April  9,  1904,  p.  865)  finds  that  abortion  is  "wholesale  and  systematic," 
and  gives  four  cases  occurring  in  his  practice  during  four  months,  in 
which  women  either  attempted  to  produce  abortion,  or  requested  him 
to  do  so;  they  were  married  women,  usually  with  large  families,  and 
in  delicate  health,  and  were  willing  to  endure  any  suffering,  if  they 
might  be  saved  from  further  child-bearing.  Abortion  is  frequently  ef- 
fected, or  attempted,  by  taking  "Female  Pills,"  which  contain  small 
portions  of  lead,  and  are  thus  liable  to  produce  very  serious  symptoms, 
whether  or  not  they  induce  abortion.  Professor  Arthur  Hall,  of  Shef- 
field, who  has  especially  studied  this  use  of  lead  ("The  Increasing  Use 
of  Lead  as  an  Abortifacient,"  British  Medical  Journal,  March  18,  1905), 
finds  that  the  practice  has  lately  become  very  common  in  the  English 
Midlands,  and  is  gradually,  it  appears,  widening  its  circle.  It  occurs 
chiefly  among  married  women  with  families,  belonging  to  the  working 
class,  and  it  tends  to  become  specially  prevalent  during  periods  of  trade 
depression  (cf.  Gr.  Newman,  Infant  Mortality,  p.  81).  Women  of  bet- 
ter social  class  resort  to  professional  abortionists,  and  sometimes  go 
over  to  Paris. 

In  France,  also,  and  especially  in  Paris,  there  has  been  a  great 
increase  during  recent  years  in  the  practice  of  abortion.  (See  e.g.,  a  dis- 
cussion at  the  Paris  Societe  de  Mgdecine  Legale,  Archives  d'Anthro- 
pologie  Criminelle,  May,  1907.)  Doleris  has  shown  (Bulletin  de  la  So- 
ciete d'Oostetrique,  Feb.,  1905)  that  in  the  Paris  Maternites  the  per- 
centage of  abortions  in  pregnancies  doubled  between  1898  and  1904, 
and  Doleris  estimates  that  about  half  of  these  abortions  were  artificially 
induced.  In  France,  abortion  is  mainly  carried  on  by  professional 
abortionists.  One  of  these,  Mme.  Thomas,  who  was  condemned  to  penal 
servitude,  in  1891,  acknowledged  performing  10,000  abortions  during 
eight  years;  her  charge  for  the  operation  was  two  francs  and  upwards. 
She  was  a  peasant's  daughter,  brought  up  in  the  home  of  her  uncle, 
a  doctor,  whose  medical  and  obstetrical  books  she  had  devoured  (A. 
Hamon,  La  France  en  1891,,  pp.  629-631).  French  public  opinion  is 
lenient  to  abortion,  especially  to  Avomen  who  perform  the  operation  on 
themselves;    not  many  cases  are  brought  into  court,  and  of  these,  forty 


604  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

per  cent,  are  acquitted  (Eugene  Bausset,  L'Avortement  Criminel,  Th&se 
de  Paris,  1907).  The  professional  abortionist  is,  however,  usually  sent 
to  prison. 

In  Germany,  also,  abortion  appears  to  have  greatly  increased 
during  recent  years,  and  the  yearly  number  of  cases  of  criminal  abor- 
tion brought  into  the  courts  was,  in  1903,  more  than  double  as  many  as 
in  1885.  (See,  also,  Elisabeth  Zanzinger,  Geschlccht  und  Gesellschaft, 
Bd.  II,  Heft  5;    and  Sexual-ProUeme,  Jan.,  1908,  p.  23.) 

In  view  of  these  facts  it  is  not  surprising  that  the  induction 
of  abortion  has  been  permitted  and  even  encouraged  in  many 
civilizations.  Its  unqualified  condemnation  is  only  found  in 
Christendom,  and  is  due  to  theoretical  notions.  In  Turkey, 
under  ordinary  circumstances,  there  is  no  punishment  for 
abortion.  In  the  classic  civilization  of  Greece  and  Eome,  like- 
wise, abortion  was  permitted  though  with  certain  qualifications 
and  conditions.  Plato  admitted  the  mother's  right  to  decide  on 
abortion  but  said  that  the  question  should  be  settled  as  early  as 
possible  in  pregnancy.  Aristotle,  who  approved  of  abortion,  was 
of  the  same  opinion.  Zeno  and  the  Stoics  regarded  the  foetus  as 
the  fruit  of  the  womb,  the  soul  being  acquired  at  birth ;  this  was 
in  accordance  with  Eoman  law  which  decreed  that  the  foetus  only 
became  a  human  being  at  birth.1  Among  the  Eomans  abortion 
became  very  common,  but,  in  accordance  with  the  patriarchal 
basis  of  early  Eoman  institutions,  it  was  the  father,  not  the 
mother,  who  had  the  right  to  exercise  it.  Christianity  introduced 
a  new  circle  of  ideas  based  on  the  importance  of  the  soul,  on  its 
immortality,  and  the  necessity  of  baptism  as  a  method  of  salva- 
tion from  the  results  of  inherited  sin.  We  already  see  this  new 
attitude  in  St.  Augustine  who,  discussing  whether  embryos  that 
died  in  the  womb  will  rise  at  the  resurrection,  says  "I  make  bold 
neither  to  affirm  nor  to  deny,  although  I  fail  to  see  why,  if  they 
are  not  excluded  from  the  number  of  the  dead,  they  should  not 
attain  to  the  resurrection  of  the  dead."2  The  criminality  of 
abortion  was,  however,  speedily  established,  and  the  early  Chris- 

i  There  are  some  disputed  points  in  Roman  law  and  practice  con- 
cerning abortion;  they  are  discussed  in  Balestrini's  valuable  book, 
Aborto,  pp.  30  et  sdq. 

2  Augustine,  De  Givitate  Dei,  Bk.  XXII,  Ch.  XIII. 


THE    SCIENCE    OF    PROCREATION.  605 

tian  Emperors,  in  agreement  with  the  Church,  edicted  many 
fantastic  and  extreme  penalties  against  abortion.  This  tendency 
continued  under  ecclesiastical  influence,  unrestrained,  until  the 
humanitarian  movement  of  the  eighteenth  century,  when  Bec- 
caria,  Voltaire,  Eousseau  and  other  great  reformers  succeeded  in 
turning  the  tide  of  public  opinion  against  the  barbarity  of  the 
laws,  and  the  penalty  of  death  for  abortion  was  finally  abolished.1 
Medical  science  and  practice  at  the  present  day — although 
it  can  scarcely  be  said  that  it  speaks  with  an  absolutely  unanimous 
voice — on  the  whole  occupies  a  position  midway  between  that  of 
the  classic  lawyers  and  that  of  the  later  Christian  ecclesiastics. 
It  is,  on  the  whole,  in  favor  of  sacrificing  the  foetus  whenever 
the  interests  of  the  mother  demand  such  a  sacrifice.  General 
medical  opinion  is  not,  however,  prepared  at  present  to  go  fur- 
ther, and  is  distinctly  disinclined  to  aid  the  parents  in  exerting 
an  unqualified  control  over  the  foetus  in  the  vjomb,  nor  is  it  yet 
disposed  to  practice  abortion  on  eugenic  grounds.  It  is  obvious, 
indeed,  that  medicine  cannot  in  this  matter  take  the  initiative,  for 
it  is  the  primary  duty  of  medicine  to  save  life.  Society  itself 
must  assume  the  responsibility  of  protecting  the  race. 

Dr.  S.  Macvie  ("Mother  versus  Child,"  Transactions  Edinburgh 
Obstetrical  Society,  vol.  xxiv,  1899)  elaborately  discusses  the  respective 
values  of  the  foetus  and  the  adult  on  the  basis  of  life-expectancy,  and 
concludes  that  the  foetus  is  merely  "a  parasite  performing  no  function 
whatever,"  and  that  "unless  the  life-expectancy  of  the  child  covers  the 
years  in  which  its  potentiality  is  converted  into  actuality,  the  relative 
values  of  the  maternal  and  fetal  life  will  be  that  of  actual  as  against 
potential."  This  statement  seems  fairly  sound.  Ballantyne  (Manual 
of  Antenatal  Pathology:  The  Foztus,  p.  459)  endeavors  to  make  the 
statement  more  precise  by  saying  that  "the  mother's  life  has  a  value, 
because  she  is  what  she  is,  while  the  fetus  only  has  a  possible  value, 
on  account  of  what  it  may  become." 

Durlacher,  among  others,  has  discussed,  in  careful  and  cautious 
detail,  the  various  conditions  in  which  the  physician  should,  or  should 
not,  induce  abortion  in  the  interests  of  the  mother    ("Der  Kixnstliehe 


1  The  development  of  opinion  and  law  concerning  abortion  has  been 
traced  by  Eugene  Bausset,  L'Avortement  Criminel,  Th&se  de  Paris,  1907. 
For  a  summary  of  the  practices  of  different  peoples  regarding  abortion, 
see  W.  G.  Sumner,  Folkways,  Ch.  VIII. 


606  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

Abort,"  Wiener  Elinik,  Aug.  and  Sept.,  1906)  ;  so  also,  Eugen  Wilhelm 
("Die  Abtreibung  und  das  Recht  des  Arztes  zur  Vernichtung  der  Leibes- 
frucht,"  gexual-Probleme,  May  and  June,  1909).  Wilhelm  further  dis- 
cusses whether  it  is  desirable  to  alter  the  laws  in  order  to  give  the 
physician  greater  freedom  in  deciding  on  abortion.  He  concludes  that 
this  is  not  necessary,  and  might  even  act  injuriously,  by  unduly  ham- 
pering medical  freedom.  Any  change  in  the  law  should  merely  be,  he  con- 
siders, in  the  direction  of  asserting  that  the  destruction  of  the  foetus 
is  not  abortion  in  the  legal  sense,  provided  it  is  indicated  by  the  rules 
of  medical  science.  With  reference  to  the  timidity  of  some  medical 
men  in  inducing  abortion,  Wilhelm  remarks  that,  even  in  the  present 
state  of  the  law,  the  physician  who  conscientiously  effects  abortion,  in 
accordance  with  his  best  knowledge,  even  if  mistakenly,  may  consider 
himself  safe  from  all  legal  penalties,  and  that  he  is  much  more  likely 
to  come  in  conflict  with  the  law  if  it  can  be  proved  that  death  followed 
as  a  result  of  his  neglect  to  induce  abortion. 

Pinard,  who  has  discussed  the  right  to  control  the  foetal  life 
(Annales  de  Gynecologie,  vols,  lii  and  liii,  1899  and  1900),  inspired  by 
his  enthusiastic  propaganda  for  the  salvation  of  infant  life,  is  led  to  the 
unwarranted  conclusion  that  no  one  has  the  rights  of  life  and  death 
over  the  foetus;  "the  infant's  right  to  his  life  is  an  imprescriptible  and 
sacred  right,  which  no  power  can  take  from  him."  There  is  a  mistake 
here,  unless  Pinard  deliberately  desires  to  place  himself,  like  Tolstoy,  in 
opposition  to  current  civilized  morality.  So  far  from  the  infant  hav- 
ing any  "imprescriptible  right  to  life,"  even  the  adult  has,  in  human 
societies,  no  such  inalienable  right,  and  very  much  less  the  foetus,  which 
is  not  strictly  a  human  being  at  all.  We  assume  the  right  of  terminat- 
ing the  lives  of  those  individuals  whose  anti-social  conduct  makes  them 
dangerous,  and,  in  war,  we  deliberately  terminate,  amid  general  applause 
and  enthusiasm,  the  lives  of  men  who  have  been  specially  selected  for 
this  purpose  on  account  of  their  physical  and  general  efficiency.  It 
would  be  absurdly  inconsistent  to  say  that  we  have  no  rights  over  the 
lives  of  creatures  that  have,  as  yet,  no  part  in  human  society  at  all, 
and  are  not  so  much  as  born.  We  are  here  in  presence  of  a  vestige  of 
ancient  theological  dogma,  and  there  can  be  little  doubt  that,  on  the 
theoretical  side  at  all  events,  the  "imprescriptible  right"  of  the  embryo 
will  go  the  same  way  as  the  "imprescriptible  right"  of  the  spermatozoon. 
Both  rights  are  indeed  "imprescriptible." 

Of  recent  years  a  new,  and,  it  must  be  admitted,  somewhat 
"unexpected,  aspect  of  this  question  of  abortion  has  been  revealed. 
Hitherto  it  has  been  a  question  entirely  in  the  hands  of  men, 
first,  following  the  Eoman  traditions,  in  the  hands  of  Christian 


THE    SCIENCE    OF    PROCREATION.  607 

ecclesiastics,  and  later,  in  those  of  the  professional  castes.  Yet 
the  question  is  in  reality  very  largely,  and  indeed  mainly,  a 
woman's  question,  and  now,  more  especially  in  Germany,  it  has 
been  actively  taken  up  by  women.  The  Grafin  Gisela  Streitberg 
occupies  the  pioneering  place  in  this  movement  with  her  book 
Das  Recht  zur  Beiseitigung  Keimenden  Lebens,  and  was  speedily 
followed,  from  1897  onwards,  by  a  number  of  distinguished 
women  who  occupy  a  prominent  place  in  the  German  woman's 
movement,  among  others  Helene  Stocker,  Oda  Olberg,  Elisabeth 
Zanzinger,  Camilla  Jellinek.  All  these  writers  insist  that  the 
foetus  is  not  yet  an  independent  human  being,  and  that  every 
woman,  by  virtue  of  the  right  over  her  own  body,  is  entitled  to 
decide  whether  it  shall  become  an  independent  human  being. 
At  the  Woman's  Congress  held  in  the  autumn  of  1905,  a  resolu- 
tion was  passed  demanding  that  abortion  should  only  be  punish- 
able when  effected  by  another  person  against  the  wish  of  the 
pregnant  women  herself.1  The  acceptance  of  this  resolution  by 
a  representative  assembly  is  interesting  proof  of  the  interest  now 
taken  by  women  in  the  question,  and  of  the  strenuous  attitude 
they  are  tending  to  assume. 

Elisabeth  Zanzinger  ( "Verbrechen  gegen  die  Leibesfrucht,"  Gesch- 
lecht  und  Gesellschaft,  Bd.  II,  Heft  5,  1907)  ably  and  energetically 
condemns  the  law  which  makes  abortion  a  crime.  "A  woman  herself  is 
the  only  legitimate  possessor  of  her  own  body  and  her  own  health. 
.  .  .  Just  as  it  is  a  woman's  private  right,  and  most  intimate  con- 
cern, to  present  her  virginity  as  her  best  gift  to  the  chosen  of  her 
heart,  so  it  is  certainly  a  pregnant  woman's  own  private  concern  if, 
for  reasons  which  seem  good  to  her,  she  decides  to  destroy  the  results  of 
her  action."  A  woman  who  destroys  the  embryo  which  might  become 
a  burden  to  the  community,  or  is  likely  to  be  an  inferior  member  of 
society,  this  writer  urges,  is  doing  a  service  to  the  community,  which 
ought  to  reward  her,  perhaps  by  granting  her  special  privileges  as  re- 
gards the  upbringing  of  her  other  children.  Oda  Olberg,  in  a  thoughtful 
paper  ("Ueber  den  Juristischen  Schutz  des  Keimenden  Lebens,"  Die 
Neue  Generation,  June,  1908),  endeavors  to  make  clear  all  that  is  in- 


1  Die  Neue  Generation,  May,  1908,  p.  192.  It  may  be  added  that 
in  England  the  attachment  of  any  penalty  at  all  to  abortion,  practiced 
in  the  early  months  of  pregnancy  (before  "quickening"  has  taken  place), 
is  merely  a  modern  innovation. 


608  PSYCHOLOGY    OP    SEX. 

volved  in  the  effort  to  protect  the  developing  embryo  against  the  organism 
that  carries  it,  to  protect  a  creature,  that  is,  against  itself  and  its  own 
instincts.  She  considers  that  most  of  the  women  who  terminate  their 
pregnancies  artificially  would  only  have  produced  undesirables,  for  the 
normal,  healthy,  robust  woman  has  no  desire  to  effect  abortion.  "There 
are  women  who  are  psychically  sterile,  without  being  physically  so,  and 
who  possess  nothing  of  motherhood  but  the  ability  to  bring  forth.  These, 
when  they  abort,  are  simply  correcting  a  failure  of  Nature."  Some  of 
them,  she  remarks,  by  going  on  to  term,  become  guilty  of  the  far  worse 
offence  of  infanticide.  A3  for  the  women  who  desire  abortion  merely 
from  motives  of  vanity,  or  convenience,  Oda  Olberg  points  out  that  the 
circles  in  which  these  motives  rule  are  quite  able  to  limit  their. chil- 
dren without  having  to  resort  to  abortion.  She  concludes  that  society 
must  protect  the  young  life  in  every  way,  by  social  hygiene,  by  laws 
for  the  protection  of  the  workers,  by  spreading  a  new  morality  on  the 
basis  of  the  laws  of  heredity.  But  we  need  no  law  to  protect  the 
young  creature  against  its  own  mother,  for  a  thousand  natural  forces 
are  urging  the  mother  to  protect  her  own  child,  and  we  may  be  sure 
that  she  will  not  disobey  these  forces  without  very  good  reasons. 
Camilla  Jellinek,  again  {Die  Strafrechtsreform,  etc.,  Heidelberg,  1909), 
in  a  powerful  and  well-informed  address  before  the  Associated  German 
Frauenvereine,  at  Breslau,  argues  in  the  same  sense. 

The  lawyers  very  speedily  came  to  the  assistance  of  the  women  in 
this  matter,  the  more  readily,  no  doubt,  since  the  traditions  of  the 
greatest  and  most  influential  body  of  law  already  pointed,  on  one  side 
at  all  events,  in  the  same  direction.  It  may,  indeed,  be  claimed  that 
it  was  from  the  side  of  law — and  in  Italy,  the  classic  land  of  legal 
reform — that  this  new  movement  first  begun.  In  1888,  Balestrini  pub- 
lished, at  Turin,  his  Aborto,  Infanticidio  ed  Esposisione  d'Infante,  in 
which  he  argued  that  the  penalty  should  be  removed  from  abortion.  It 
was  a  very  able  and  learned  book,  inspired  by  large  ideas  and  a  humani- 
tarian spirit,  but  though  its  importance  is  now  recognized,  it  cannot 
be  said  that  it  attracted  much  attenion  on  publication. 

It  is  especially  in  Germany  that,  during  recent  years,  lawyers  have 
followed  women  reformers,  by  advocating,  more  or  less  completely,  the 
abolition  of  the  punishment  for  abortion.  So  distinguished  an  authority 
as  Von  Liszt,  in  a  private  letter  to  Camilla  Jellinek  (op.  cit.) ,  states 
that  he  regards  the  punishment  of  abortion  as  "very  doubtful,"  though 
he  considers  its  complete  abolition  impracticable;  he  thinks  abortion 
might  be  permitted  during  the  early  months  of  pregnancy,  thus  bringing 
about  a  return  of  the  old  view.  Hans  Gross  states  his  opinion  (Archiv 
fur Kriminal- Anthropologic,  Bd.  XII,  p.  345)  that  the  time  is  not  far 
distant  when  abortion  will  no  longer  be  punished.  Radbruch  and  Von 
Lilienthal  speak  in  the  same  sense.     Weinberg  has  advocated  a  change 


THE    SCIENCE    OF    PROCREATION.  609 

in  the  law  {MutterscJiutz,  1905,  Heft  S),  and  Kurt  Hiller  {Die  Neue 
Generation,  April,  1909),  also  from  the  legal  side,  argues  that  abortion 
should  only  be  punishable  when  effected  by  a  married  woman,  without 
the  knowledge  and  consent  of  her  husband. 

The  medical  profession,  which  took  the  first  step  in  modern 
times  in  the  authorization  of  abortion,  has  not  at  present  taken 
any  further  step.  It  has  been  content  to  lay  down  the  principle 
that  when  the  interests  of  the  mother  are  opposed  to  those  of  the 
foetus,  it  is  the  latter  which  must  be  sacrificed.  It  has  hesitated 
to  take  the  further  step  of  placing  abortion  on  the  eugenic  basis, 
and  of  claiming  the  right  to  insist  on  abortion  whenever  the 
medical  and  hygienic  interests  of  society  demand  such  a  step. 
This  attitude  is  perfectly  intelligible.  Medicine  has  in  the  past 
been  chiefly  identified  with  the  saving  of  lives,  even  of  worthless 
and  worse  than  worthless  lives ;  "Keep  everything  alive !  Keep 
everything  alive !"  nervously  cried  Sir  James  Paget.  Medicine 
has  confined  itself  to  the  humble  task  of  attempting  to  cure  evils, 
and  is  only  to-day  beginning  to  undertake  the  larger  and  nobler 
task  of  preventing  them. 

"The  step  from  killing  the  child  in  the  womb  to  murdering  a  per- 
son when  out  of  the  womb,  is  a  dangerously  narrow  one,"  sagely  re- 
marks a  recent  medical  author,  probably  speaking  for  many  others, 
who  somehow  succeed  in  blinding  themselves  to  the  fact  that  this  "dan- 
gerously narrow  step"  has  been  taken  by  mankind,  only  too  freely,  for 
thousands  of  years  past,  long  before  abortion  was  known  in  the  world. 

Here  and  there,  however,  medical  authors  of  repute  have  advocated 
the  further  extension  of  abortion,  with  precautions,  and  under  proper 
supervision,  as  an  aid  to  eugenic  progress.  Thus,  Professor  Max  Flesch 
{Die  Neue  Generation,  April,  1909)  is  in  favor  of  a  change  in  the  law 
permitting  abortion  (provided  it  is  carried  out  by  the  physician)  in 
special  cases,  as  when  the  mother's  pregnancy  has  been  due  to  force, 
when  she  has  been  abandoned,  or  when,  in  the  interests  of  the  com- 
munity, it  is  desirable  to  prevent  the  propagation  of  insane,  criminal, 
alcoholic,  or  tuberculous  persons. 

In  France,  a  medical  man,  Dr.  Jean  Darricarrere,  has  written  a 
remarkable  novel,  Le  Droit  d'Avortement  (1906),  which  advocates  the 
thesis  that  a  woman  always  possesses  a  complete  right  to  abortion,  and 
is  the  supreme  judge  as  to  whether  she  will  or  not  undergo  the  pain 
and  risks  of  childbirth.  The  question  is,  here,  however,  obviously 
placed  not  on  medical,  but  on  humanitarian  and  feminist  grounds. 


610  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

We  have  seen  that,  alike  on  the  side  of  practice  and  of 
theory,  a  great  change  has  taken  place  during  recent  years  in 
the  attitude  towards  abortion.  It  must,  however,  clearly  be 
recognized  that,  unlike  the  control  of  procreation  by  methods  for 
preventing  conception,  facultative  abortion  has  not  yet  been 
embodied  in  our  current  social  morality.  If  it  is  permissible  to 
interpolate  a  personal  opinion,  I  may  say  that  to  me  it  seems 
that  our  morality  is  here  fairly  reasonable.1  I  am  decidedly  of 
opinion  that  an  unrestricted  permission  for  women  to  practice 
abortion  in  their  own  interests,  or  even  for  communities  to 
practice  it  in  the  interests  of  the  race,  would  be  to  reach  beyond 
the  stage  of  civilization  we  have  at  present  attained.  As  Ellen 
Key  very  forcibly  argues,  a  civilization  which  permits,  without 
protest,  the  barbarous  slaughter  of  its  carefully  selected  adults 
in  war  has  not  yet  won  the  right  to  destroy  deliberately  even  its 
most  inferior  vital  products  in  the  womb.  A  civilization  guilty 
of  so  reckless  a  waste  of  life  cannot  safely  be  entrusted  with  this 
.judicial  function.  The  blind  and  aimless  anxiety  to  cherish  the 
most  hopeless  and  degraded  forms  of  life,  even  of  unborn  life, 
may  well  be  a  weakness,  and  since  it  often  leads  to  incalculable 
suffering,  even  a  crime.  But  as  yet  there  is  an  impenetrable 
barrier  against  progress  in  this  direction.  Before  we  are  entitled 
to  take  life  deliberately  for  the  sake  of  purifying  life,  we  must 
learn  how  to  preserve  it  by  abolishing  such  destructive  influences 
— war,  disease,  bad  industrial  conditions — as  are  easily  within 
our  social  power  as  civilized  nations.2 


l  Even  Balestrini,  who  is  opposed  to  the  punishment  of  abortion, 
is  no  advocate  of  it.  "Whenever  abortion  becomes  a  social  custom," 
he  remarks  (op.  tit.,  p.  191),  "it  is  the  external  manifestation  of  a 
people's  decadence,  and  far  too  deeply  rooted  to  be  cured  by  the  mere 
attempt  to  suppress  the  external  manifestation." 

2Cf.  Ellen  Key,  Century  of  the  Child,  Ch.  I.  Hirth  (Wege  zum 
Eeimat,  p.  526)  is  likewise  opposed  to  the  encouragement  of  abortion, 
though  he  would  not  actually  punish  the  pregnant  woman  who  in- 
duces abortion.  I  would  especially  call  attention  to  an  able  and  cogent 
article  by  Anna  Pappritz  ("Die  Vernichtung  des  Keimenden  Lebens," 
Sexual- Pro Meme,  July,  1909)  who  argues  that  the  woman  is  not  the 
sole  guardian  of  the  embryo  she  bears,  and  that  it  is  not  in  the 
interests  of  society,  nor  even  in  her  own  interests,  that  she  should  be 
free  to  destroy  it  at  will.  Anna  Pappritz  admits  that  the  present  bar- 
barous laws  in  regard  to   abortion  must  be  modified,  but  maintains 


THE    SCIENCE    OF    PROCREATION.  611 

There  is,  further,  another  consideration  which  seems  to  me 
to  carry  weight.  The  progress  of  civilization  is  in  the  direction 
of  greater  foresight,  of  greater  prevention,  of  a  diminished  need 
for  struggling  with  the  reckless  lack  of  prevision.  The  necessity 
for  abortion  is  precisely  one  of  those  results  of  reckless  action 
which  civilization  tends  to  diminish.  While  we  may  admit  that 
in  a  sounder  state  of  civilization  a  few  cases  might  still  occur 
when  the  induction  of  abortion  would  be  desirable,  it  seems 
probable  that  the  number  of  such  cases  will  decrease  rather  than 
increase.  In  order  to  do  away  with  the  need  for  abortion,  and  to 
counteract  the  propaganda  in  its  favor,  our  main  reliance  must 
be  placed,  on  the  one  hand,  on  increased  foresight  in  the  deter- 
mination of  conception  and  increased  knowledge  of  the  means  for 
preventing  conception,1  and  on  the  other  hand,  on  a  better  pro- 
vision by  the  State  for  the  care  of  pregnant  women,  married  and 
unmarried  alike,  and  a  practical  recognition  of  the  qualified 
mother's  claim  on  society.2  There  can  be  little  doubt  that,  in 
many  a  charge  of  criminal  abortion,  the  real  offence  lies  at  the 
door  of  those  who  have  failed  to  exercise  their  social  and  profes- 
sional duty  of  making  known  the  more  natural  and  harmless 
methods  for  preventing  conception,  or  else  by  their  social  attitude 
have  made  the  pregnant  woman's  position  intolerable.  By  active 
social  reform  in  these  two  directions,  the  new  movement  in  favor 
of  abortion  may  be  kept  in  check,  and  it  may  even  be  found  that 
by  stimulating  such  reform  that  movement  has  been  beneficial. 

We  have  seen  that  the  deliberate  restraint  of  conception  has 
become  a  part  of  our  civilized  morality,  and  that  the  practice 
and  theory  of  facultative  abortion  has  gained  a  footing  among 
us.  •  There  remains  a  third  and  yet  more  radical  method  of  con- 


that  they  should  not  be  abolished.  She  proposes  (1)  a  greatly  reduced 
ptraishment  for  abortion;  (2)  this  punishment  to  be  extended  to  the 
father,  whether  married  or  unmarried  (a  provision  already  carried  out 
in  Norway,  both  for  abortion  and  infanticide)  ;  (3)  permission  to  the 
physician  to  effect  abortion  when  there  is  good  reason  to  suspect  heredi- 
tary degeneration,  as  well  as  when  the  woman  has  been  impregnated 
by  force. 

1  Of.  Dr.  Max  Hirsch,  Sexual- Probleme,  Jan.,  1908,  p.  23. 

2Bausset  (op.  cit.)  spts  forth  various  social  measures  for  the  care 
of  pregnant  and  child-bearing  women,  which  would  tend  to  lessen  crim- 
inal abortion. 


612  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

trolling  procreation,  the  method  of  preventing  the  possibility  of 
procreation  altogether  by  the  performance  of  castration  or  other 
slighter  operation  having  a  like  inhibitory  effect  on  reproduction. 
The  other  two  methods  only  effect  a  single  act  of  union  or  its 
results,  but  castration  affects  all  subsequent  acts  of  sexual  union 
and  usually  destroys  the  procreative  power  permanently. 

Castration  for  various  social  and  other  purposes  is  an  ancient 
and  wide-spread  practice,  carried  out  on  men  and  on  animals. 
There  has,  however,  been  on  the  whole  a  certain  prejudice  against 
it  when  applied  to  men.  Many  peoples  have  attached  a  very  sacred 
value  to  the  integrity  of  the  sexual  organs.  Among  some  primi- 
tive peoples  the  removal  of  these  organs  has  been  regarded  as  a 
peculiarly  ferocious  insult,  only  to  be  carried  out  in  moments 
of  great  excitement,  as  after  a  battle.  Medicine  has  been  opposed 
to  any  interference  with  the  sexual  organs.  The  oath  taken  by 
the  Greek  physicians  appears  to  prohibit  castration :  "I  will  not 
cut."1  In  modern  times  a  great  change  has  taken  place,  the 
castration  of  both  men  and  women  is  commonly  performed  in 
diseased  conditions;  the  same  operation  is  sometimes  advocated 
and  occasionally  performed  in  the  hope  that  it  may  remove 
strong  and  abnormal  sexual  impulses.  And  during  recent  years 
castration  has  been  invoked  in  the  cause  of  negative  eugenics,  to 
a  greater  extent,  indeed,  on  account  of  its  more  radical  character, 
than  either  the  prevention  of  conception  or  abortion. 

The  movement  in  favor  of  castration  appears  to  have  begun 
in  the  United  States,  where  various  experiments  have  been  made 
in  embodying  it  in  law.  It  was  first  advocated  merely  as  a 
punishment  for  criminals,  and  especially  sexual  offenders,  by 
Hammond,  Everts,  Lydston  and  others.  From  this  point  of 
view,  however,  it  seems  to  be  unsatisfactory  and  perhaps  illegiti- 
mate. In  many  cases  castration  is  no  punishment  at  all,  and 
indeed  a  positive  benefit.  In  other  cases,  when  inflicted  against 
the  subject's  will,  it  may  produce  very  disturbing  mental  effects, 
leading  in  already  degenerate  or  unbalanced  persons  to  insanity, 
criminality,   and   anti-social   tendencies   generally,   much   more 


1  Gomperz,  Qreek  Thinkers,  vol.  i,  p.  564. 


THE    SCIENCE   OF    PROCREATION".  613 

dangerous  than  the  original  state.  Eugenic  considerations, 
which  were  later  brought  forward,  constitute  a  much  sounder 
argument  for  castration;  in  this  case  the  castration  is  carried 
out,  by  no  means  in  order  to  inflict  a  barbarous  and  degrading 
punishment,  but,  with  the  subject's  consent,  in  order  to  protect 
the  community  from  the  risk  of  useless  or  mischievous  members. 

The  fact  that  castration  can  no  longer  be  properly  considered  a 
punishment,  is  shown  by  the  possibility  of  deliberately  seeking  the 
operation  simply  for  the  sake  of  convenience,  as  a  preferable  and  most 
effective  substitute  for  the  adoption  of  preventive  methods  in  sexual 
intercourse.  I  am  only  at  present  acquainted  with  one  case  in  which 
thi3  course  has  been  adopted.  This  subject  is  a  medical  man  (of  Puritan 
New  England  ancestry)  with  whose  sexual  history,  which  is  quite 
normal,  I  have  been  acquainted  for  a  long  time  past.  His  present  age 
is  thirty-nine.  A  few  years  since,  having  a  sufficiently  large  family,  he 
adopted  preventive  methods  of  intercourse.  The  subsequent  events  I 
narrate  in  his  own  words:  "The  trouble,  forethought,  etc.,  rendered 
necessary  by  preventive  measures,  grew  more  and  more  irksome  to  me 
as  the  years  passed  by,  and  finally,  I  laid  the  matter  before  another 
physician,  and  on  his  assurances,  and  after  mature  deliberation  with 
my  wife,  was  operated  on  some  time  since,  and  rendered  sterile  by  hav- 
ing the  vas  deferens  on  each  side  exposed  through  a  slit  in  the  scrotum, 
then  tied  in  two  places  with  silk  and  severed  between  the  ligatures. 
This  was  done  under  cocaine  infiltrative  anaesthesia,  and  was  not  so 
extremely  painful,  though  what  pain  there  was  (dragging  the  cord  out 
through  the  slit,  etc.)  seemed  very  hard  to  endure.  I  was  not  out  of  my 
office  a  single  day,  nor  seriously  disturbed  in  any  way.  In  six  days  all 
stitches  in  the  scrotum  were  removed,  and  in  three  weeks  I  abandoned 
the  suspensory  bandage  that  had  been  rendered  necessary  by  the  ex- 
treme sensitiveness  of  the  testicles  and  cord. 

"The  operation  has  Droved  a  most  complete  success  in  every  way. 
Sexual  functions  are  absolutely  unaffected  in  any  way  whatsoever.  There 
is  no  sense  of  discomfort  or  uneasiness  in  the  sexual  tract,  and  what 
seems  strangest  of  all  to  me,  is  the  fact  that  the  semen,  so  far  as  one 
can  judge  by  ordinary  means  of  observation,  is  undiminished  in  quan- 
tity and  unchanged  in  character.  (Of  course,  the  microscope  would 
reveal  its  fatal  lack.) 

"My  wife  is  delighted  at  having  fear  banished  from  our  love,  and, 
taken  all  in  all,  it  certainly  seems  as  if  life  would  mean  more  to  us 
both.  Incidentally,  the  health  of  both  of  us  seems  better  than  usual, 
particularly  so  in  my  wife's  case,  and  this  she  attributes  to  a  sooth- 
ing influence  that  is  attained  by  allowing  the  seminal  fluid  to  be  de- 


614  PSYCHOLOGY    OP    SEX. 

posited  in  a  perfectly  normal  manner,  and  remain  in  contact  with  the 
vaginal  secretions  until  it  naturally  passes  off. 

"This  operation  being  comparatively  new,  and,  as  yet,  not  often 
done  on  others  than  the  insane,  criminal,  etc.,  I  thought  it  might  be 
of  interest  to  you.  If  I  shed  even  the  faintest  ray  of  light  on  this  great- 
est of  all  human  problems     ...     I  shall  be  glad  indeed." 

Such  a  case,  with  its  so  far  satisfactory  issue,  certainly  deserves 
to  be  placed  on  record,  though  it  may  well  be  that  at  present  it  will 
not  be  widely  imitated. 

The  earliest  advocacy  of  castration,  which  I  have  met  with 
as  a  part  of  negative  eugenics,  for  the  specific  "purpose  of 
prophylaxis  as  applied  to  race  improvement  and  the  protection  of 
society,"  is  by  Dr.  F.  E.  Daniel,  of  Texas,  and  dates  from  1893. 1 
Daniel  mixed  up,  however,  somewhat  inextricably,  castration  as 
a  method  of  purifying  the  race,  a  method  which  can  be  carried 
out  with  the  concurrence  of  the  individual  operated  on,  with  cas- 
tration as  a  punishment,  to  be  inflicted  for  rape,  sodomy, 
bestiality,  pederasty  and  even  habitual  masturbation,  the  method 
of  its  performance,  moreover,  to  be  the  extremely  barbarous  and 
primitive  method  of  total  ablation  of  the  sexual  organs.  In  more 
recent  years  somewhat  more  equitable,  practical,  and  scientific 
methods  of  castration  have  been  advocated,  not  involving  the 
removal  of  the  sexual  glands  or  organs,  and  not  as  a  punishment, 
but  simply  for  the  sake  of  protecting  the  community  and  the  race 
from  the  burden  of  probably  unproductive  and  possibly  dangerous 
members.  Naeke  has,  from  1899  onwards,  repeatedly  urged  the 
social  advantages  of  this  measure.2  The  propagation  of  the 
inferior  elements  of  society,  Nacke  insists,  brings  unhappiness 
into  the  family  and  is  a  source  of  great  expense  to  the  State. 
He  regards  castration  as  the  only  effective  method  of  prevention, 
and  concludes  that  it  is,  therefore,  our  duty  to  adopt  it,  just  as 

i  F.  E.  Daniel,  President  of  the  State  Medical  Association  of 
Texas,  "Should  Insane  Criminals  or  Sexual  Perverts  be  Allowed  to 
Procreate?"  Medico-legal  Journal,  Dec,  1893;  id.,  "The  Cause  and  Pre- 
vention of  Rape,"  Texas  Medical  Journal,  May,  1904. 

2  P.  Naeke,  "Die  Kastration  bei  gewissen  Klasaen  von  Degener- 
irten  als  ein  Wirksamer  Socialer  Schutz,"  Archiv  fur  Kriminalanthro- 
pologie,  Bd.  Ill,  1899,  p.  58;  id.  "Kastration  in  Gewissen  Fallen  von 
Geisteskrankheit,"  Psychistrisch-Neuroloqische  Wochensehrift,  1905, 
^o.  29. 


THE    SCIENCE    OE    PROCREATION.  615 

we  have  adopted  vaccination,  taking  care  to  secure  the  consent 
of  the  subject  himself  or  his  guardian,  of  the  civil  authorities, 
and,  if  necessary,  of  a  committee  of  experts.  Professor  Angelo 
Zuccarelli  of  Naples  has  also,  from  1899  onwards,  emphasized 
the  importance  of  castration  in  the  sterilization  of  the  epileptic, 
the  insane  of  various  classes,  the  alcoholic,  the  tuberculous,  and 
instinctive  criminals,  the  choice  of  cases  for  operation  to  be  made 
by  a  commission  of  experts  who  would  examine  school-children, 
candidates  for  public  employments,  or  persons  about  to  marry.1 
This  movement  rapidly  gained  ground,  and  in  1905  at  the 
annual  meeting  of  Swiss  alienists  it  was  unanimously  agreed  that 
the  sterilization  of  the  insane  is  desirable,  and  that  it  is  neces- 
sary that  the  question  should  be  legally  regulated.  It  is  in 
Switzerland,  indeed,  that  the  first  steps  have  been  taken  in 
Europe  to  carry  out  castration  as  a  measure  of  social  prophylaxis. 
The  sixteenth  yearly  report  (1907)  of  the  Cantonal  asylum  at 
Wil  describes  four  cases  of  castration,  two  in  men  and  two  in 
women,  performed — with  the  permission  of  the  patients  and  the 
civil  authorities — for  social  reasons;  both  women  had  previously 
had  illegitimate  children  who  were  a  burden  on  the  community, 
and  all  four  patients  were  sexually  abnormal;  the  operation 
enabled  the  patients  to  be  liberated  and  to  work,  and  the  results 
were  considered  in  every  respect  satisfactory  to  all  concerned.2 

The  introduction  of  castration  as  a  method  of  negative  eugenics 
has  been  facilitated  by  the  use  of  new  methods  of  performing  it  with- 
out risk,  and  without  actual  removal  of  the  testes  or  ovaries.  For 
men,  there  is  the  simple  method  of  vasectomy,  as  recommended  by 
Nacke  and  many  others.  For  women,  there  is  the  corresponding,  and 
almost  equally  simple  and  harmless  method  of  Kehrer,  by  section  and 
ligation  of  the  Fallopian  tubes  through  the  vagina,  as  recommended  by 


1  Angelo  Zuccarelli,  "Asessualizzazione  o  sterilizzazione  dei  De- 
generati,"  L'Anomalo,  1898-99,  No.  6;  id.,  "Sur  la  necessity  et  sur 
les  Moyens  d'emp^eher  la  Reproduction  des  Hommes  les  plus  Degeneres," 
International  Congress  Criminal  Anthropology,  Amsterdam,  1901. 

2  Nacke,  Neurologisches  Centralblatt,  March  1,  1909.  The  original 
account  of  these  operations  is  reproduced  in  the  Psychiatrisch-Neurolo- 
gische  Wochenschrift,  No.  2,  1909,  with  an  approving  comment  by  the 
editor,  Dr.  Bresler.  As  regards  castration  in  America,  see  Flood, 
"Castration  of  Idiot  Children."  American  Journal  Psychology,  Jan., 
1899;   also,  Alienist  and  Neurologist,  Aug.,  1909,  p.  348. 


616  PSYCHOLOGY    OP    SEX. 

Kisch,  or  Rose's  very  similar  procedure,   easily  carried  out  in  a  few 
minutes  by  an  experienced  hand,  as  recommended  by  Zuccarelli. 

It  has  been  found  that  repeated  exposure  to  the  X-rays  produces 
sterility  in  both  sexes,  alike  in  animals  and  men,  and  X-ray  workers 
have  to  adopt  various  precautions  to  avoid  suffering  from  this  effect.  It 
has  been  suggested  that  the  application  of  the  X-rays  would  be  a  good 
substitute  for  castration;  it  appears  that  the  effects  of  the  application 
are  only  likely  to  last  a  few  years,  which,  in  some  doubtful  cases, 
might  be  an  advantage.  (See  British  Medical  Journal,  Aug.  13,  1904; 
ib.,  March  11,  1905;    ib.,  July  6,  1907.) 

It  is  scarcely  possible,  it  seems  to  me,  to  view  castration  as  a 
method  of  negative  eugenics  with  great  enthusiasm.  The  reck- 
lessness, moreover,  with  which  it  is  sometimes  proposed  to  apply 
it  by  law — owing  no  doubt  to  the  fact  that  it  is  not  so  obviously 
repulsive  as  the  less  radical  procedure  of  abortion — ought  to 
render  us  very  cautious.  We  must,  too,  dismiss  the  idea  of  cas- 
tration as  a  punishment;  as  such  it  is  not  merely  barbarous  but 
degrading  and  is  unlikely  to  have  a  beneficial  effect.  As  a 
method  of  negative  eugenics  it  should  never  be  carried  out  except 
with  the  subject's  consent.  The  fact  that  in  some  cases  it  might 
be  necessary  to  enforce  seclusion  in  the  absence  of  castration 
would  doubtless  be  a  fact  exerting  influence  in  favor  of  such 
consent;  but  the  consent  is  essential  if  the  subject  of  the  opera- 
tion is  to  be  safe-guarded  from  degradation.  A  man  who  has 
been  degraded  and  embittered  by  an  enforced  castration  might 
not  be  dangerous  to  posterity,  but  might  very  easily  become  a 
dangerous  member  of  the  society  in  which  he  actually  lived. 
With  due  precautions  and  safeguards,  castration  may  doubtless 
play  a  certain  part  in  the  elevation  and  improvement  of  the  race.1 

The  methods  we  have  been  considering,  in  so  far  as  they 

l  It  is  probable  that  castration  may  prove  especially  advantageous 
in  the  case  of  the  feeble-minded.  "In  Somersetshire,"  says  Tredgold 
("The  Feeble-Mind  as  a  Social  Danger,"  Eugenics  Review,  July,  1909), 
"I  found  that  out  of  a  total  number  of  167  feeble-minded  women,  nearly 
two-fifths  (61)  had  givan  birth  to  children,  for  the  most  part  illegitimate. 
Moreover,  it  is  not  uncommon,  but,  rather  the  rule,  for  these  poor  girls  to 
be  admitted  into  the  workhouse  maternity  wards  again  and  again,  and 
the  average  number  of  offspring  to  each  one  of  them  is  probably  three 
or  four,  although  even  six  is  not  uncommon."  In  his  work  on  Mental 
Deficiency  (pp.  288-292)  the  same  author  shows  that  propagation  by  the 
mentally  deficient  is,  in  England,  "both  a  terrible  and  extensive  evil.'* 


THE    SCIENCE    OP    PROCREATION.  617 

limit  the  procreative  powers  of  the  less  healthy  and  efficient 
stocks  in  a  community,  are  methods  of  eugenics.  It  must  not, 
however,  be  supposed  that  they  are  the  whole  of  eugenics,  or 
indeed  that  they  are  in  any  way  essential  to  a  eugenic  scheme. 
Eugenics  is  concerned  with  the  whole  of  the  agencies  which 
elevate  and  improve  the  human  breed;  abortion  and  castration 
are  methods  which  may  be  used  to  this  end,  but  they  are  not 
methods  of  which  everyone  approves,  nor  is  it  always  clear  that 
the  ends  they  effect  would  not  better  be  attained  by  other 
methods;  in  any  case  they  are  methods  of  negative  eugenics. 
There  remains  the  field  of  positive  eugenics,  which  is  concerned, 
not  with  the  elimination  of  the  inferior  stocks  but  with  ascer- 
taining which  are  the  superior  stocks  and  with  furthering  their 
procreative  power. 

While  the  necessity  of  refraining  fiom  procreation  is  no 
longer  a  bar  to  marriage,  the  question  of  whether  two  persons 
ought  to  marry  each  other  still  remains  in  the  majority  of  cases 
a  serious  question  from  the  standpoint  of  positive  as  well  as  of 
negative  eugenics,  for  the  normal  marriage  cannot  fail  to  involve 
children,  as,  indeed,  its  chief  and  most  desirable  end.  We  have 
to  consider  not  merely  what  are  the  stocks  or  the  individuals 
that  are  unfit  to  breed,  but  also  what  are  these  stocks  or  individ- 
uals that  are  most  fit  to  breed,  and  under  what  conditions  pro- 
creation may  best  be  effected.  The  present  imperfection  of  our 
knowledge  on  these  questions  emphasizes  the  need  for  care  and 
caution  in  approaching  their  consideration. 

It  may  be  fitting,  at  this  point,  to  refer  to  the  experiment  of  the 
Oneida  Community  in  establishing  a  system  of  scientific  propagation, 
under  the  guidance  of  a  man  whose  ability  and  distinction  as  a  pioneer 
are  only  to-day  beginning  to  be  adequately  recognized.  John  Humphrey 
Noyes  was  too  far  ahead  of  his  own  day  to  be  recognized  at  his  true 
worth;  at  the  most,  he  was  regarded  as  the  sagacious  and  successful 
founder  of  a  sect,  and  his  attempts  to  apply  eugenics  to  life  only  aroused 
ridicule  and  persecution,  so  that  he  was,  unfortunately,  compelled  by 
outside  pressure  to  bring  a  most  instructive  experiment  to  a  prematura 
end.  His  aim  and  principle  are  set  forth  in  an  Essay  on  Scientific  Propa- 
gation, printed  some  forty  years  ago,  which  discusses  problems  that  are 
only  now  beginning  to  attract  the  attention  of  the  practical  man,  as 


618  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

within  the  range  of  social  politics.  When  Noyes  turned  his  vigorous  and 
practical  mind  to  the  question  of  eugenics,  that  question  was  exclusively 
in  the  hands  of  scientific  men,  who  felt  all  the  natural  timidity  of  the 
scientific  man  towards  the  realization  of  his  proposals,  and  who  were  not 
prepared  to  depart  a  hair's  breadth  from  the  conventional  customs  of  their 
time.  The  experiment  of  Noyes,  at  Oneida,  marked  a  new  stage  in  the 
history  of  eugenics ;  whatever  might  be  the  value  of  the  experiment — and 
a  first  experiment  cannot  well  be  final — with  Noyes  the  questions  of 
eugenics  passed  beyond  the  purely  academic  stage  in  which,  from  the 
time  of  Plato,  they  had  peacefully  reposed.  "It  is  becoming  clear," 
Noyes  states  at  the  outset,  "that  the  foundations  of  scientific  society  are 
to  be  laid  in  the  scientific  propagation  of  human  beings."  In  doing  this, 
we  must  attend  to  two  things:  blood  (or  heredity)  and  training;  and 
he  puts  blood  first.  In  that,  he  was  at  one  with  the  most  recent  bio- 
metrical  eugenists  of  to-day  ("th3  nation  has  for  years  been  putting 
its  money  on  'Environment,'  when  'Heredity'  wins  in  a  canter,"  as  Karl 
Pearson  prefers  to  put  it ) ,  and  at  the  same  time  revealed  the  breadth 
of  his  vision  in  comparison  with  the  ordinary  social  reformer,  who,  in 
that  day,  was  usually  a  fanatical  believer  in  the  influence  of  training 
and  surroundings.  Noyes  sets  forth  the  position  of  Darwin  on  the 
principles  of  breeding,  and  the  step  beyond  Darwin,  which  had  been 
taken  by  Galton.  He  then  remarks  that,  when  Galton  comes  to  the 
point  where  it  is  necessary  to  advance  from  theory  to  the  duties  the 
theory  suggests,  he  "subsides  into  the  meekest  conservatism."  (It  must 
be  remembered  that  this  was  written  at  an  early  stage  in  Galton's  work. ) 
This  conclusion  was  entirely  opposed  to  Noyes'  practical  and  religious 
temperament.  "Duty  is  plain;  we  say  we  ought  to  do  it — we  want  to 
do  it;  but  we  cannot.  The  law  of  God  urges  us  on;  but  the  law  of 
society  holds  us  back.  The  boldest  course  is  the  safest.  Let  us  take  an 
honest  and  steady  look  at  the  law.  It  is  only  in  the  timidity  of  igno- 
rance that  the  duty  seems  impracticable."  Noyes  anticipated  Galton 
is  regarding  eugenics  as  a  matter  of  religion. 

Noyes  proposed  to  term  the  work  of  modern  science  in  propagation 
"Stirpiculture,"  in  which  he  has  sometimes  been  followed  by  others. 
He  considered  that  it  is  the  business  of  the  stirpiculturist  to  keep 
in  view  both  quantity  and  quality  of  stocks,  and  he  held  that,  without 
diminishing  quantity,  it  was  possible  to  raise  the  quality  by  exercising 
a  very  stringent  discrimination  in  selecting  males.  At  this  point,  Noyes 
has  been  supported  in  recent  years  by  Karl  Pearson  and  others,  who 
have  shown  that  only  a  relatively  small  portion  of  a  population  is 
needed  to  produce  the  next  generation,  and  that,  in  fact,  twelve  per  cent, 
of  one  generation  in  man  produces  fifty  per  cent,  of  the  next  genera- 
tion. What  we  need  to  ensure  is  that  this  small  reproducing  section  of 
the  population  shall  be  the  best  adapted  for  the  purpose.    "The  quantity 


THE    SCIENCE    OF    PROCREATION.  619 

of  production  will  be  in  direct  proportion  to  the  number  of  fertile 
females,"  as  Noyes  saw  the  question,  "and  the  value  produced,  so  far 
as  it  depends  on  selection,  will  be  nearly  in  inverse  proportion  to  the 
number  of  fertilizing  males."  In  this  matter,  Noyes  anticipated 
Ehrenfels.  The  two  principles  to  be  held  in  mind  were,  "Breed  from 
the  best,"  and  "Breed  in-and-in,"  with  a  cautious  and  occasional  intro- 
duction of  new  strains.  (It  may  be  noted  that  Reibmayr,  in  his  recent 
Eniicicklungsgeschichte  des  Genics  und  Talentes,  argues  that  the  su- 
perior races,  and  superior  individuals,  in  the  human  species,  have  been 
produced  by  an  unconscious  adherence  to  exactly  these  principles.) 
"By  segregating  superior  families,  and  by  breeding  these  in-and-in, 
superior  varieties  of  human  beings  might  be  produced,  which  would 
be  comparable  to  the  thoroughbreds  in  all  the  domestic  races."  He 
illustrates  this  by  the  early  history  of  the  Jews. 

Noyes  finally  criticises  the  present  method,  or  lack  of  method,  in 
matters  of  propagation.  Our  marriage  system,  he  states,  "leaves  mating 
to  be  determined  by  a  general  scramble."  By  ignoring,  also,  the  great 
difference  between  the  sexes  in  reproductive  power,  it  "restricts  each 
man,  whatever  may  be  his  potency  and  his  value,  to  the  amount  of 
production  of  which  one  woman,  chosen  blindly,  may  be  capable."  More- 
over, he  continues,  "practically  it  discriminates  against  the  best,  and 
in  favor  of  the  worst;  for,  while  the  good  man  will  be  limited  by  his 
conscience  to  what  the  law  allows,  the  bad  man,  free  from  moral  check, 
will  distribute  his  seed  beyond  the  legal  limits,  as  widely  as  he  dares." 
"We  are  safe  every  way  in  saying  that  there  is  no  possibility  of  carry- 
ing the  two  precepts  of  scientific  propagation  into  an  institution  which 
pretends  to  no  discrimination,  allows  no  suppression,  gives  no  more 
liberty  to  the  best  than  to  the  worst,  and  which,  in  fact,  must  inevitably 
discriminate  the  wrong  way,  so  long  as  the  inferior  classes  are  most 
prolific  and  least  amenable  to  the  admonitions  of  science  and  morality." 
In  modifying  our  sexual  institutions,  Noyes  insists  there  are  two  es- 
sential points  to  remember :  the  preservation  of  liberty,  and  the  preser- 
vation of  the  home.  There  must  be  no  compulsion  about  human 
scientific  propagation;  it  must  be  autonomous,  directed  by  self-govern- 
ment, "by  the  free  choice  of  those  who  love  science  well  enough  to 
'make  themselves  eunuchs  for  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven's  sake.' "  The 
home,  also,  must  be  preserved,  since  "marriage  is  the  best  thing  for  man 
as  he  is;"  but  it  is  necessary  to  enlarge  the  home,  for,  "if  all  could 
learn  to  love  other  children  than  their  own,  there  would  be  nothing  to 
hinder  scientific  propagation  in  the  midst  of  homes  far  better  than  any 
that  now  exist." 

This  memorable  pamphlet  contains  no  exposition  of  the  precise 
measures  adopted  by  the  Oneida  Community  to  carry  out  these  prin- 
ciples.    The  two  essential  points  were,  as  we  know,  "male  continence" 


620  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

(see  ante  p.  553),  and  the  enlarged  family,  in  which  all  the  men  were 
the  actual  or  potential  mates  of  all  the  women,  but  no  union  for  propa- 
gation took  place,  except  as  the  result  of  reason  and  deliberate  resolve. 
"The  community,"  says  H.  J.  Seymour,  one  of  the  original  members 
[The  Oneida  Community,  1894,  p.  5),  "was  a  family,  as  distinctly  sepa- 
rated from  surrounding  society  as  ordinary  households.  The  tie  that 
bound  it  together  was  as  permanent,  and  at  least  as  sacred,  as  that 
of  marriage.  Every  man's  care,  and  the  whole  of  the  common  property, 
was  pledged  for  the  maintenance  and  protection  of  the  women,  and 
the  support  and  education  of  the  children."  It  is  not  probable  that  the 
Oneida  Community  presented  in  detail  the  model  to  which  human 
society  generally  will  conform.  But  even  at  the  lowest  estimate,  its 
success  showed,  as  Lord  Morely  has  pointed  out  [Diderot,  vol.  ii,  p.  19), 
"how  modifiable  are  some  of  these  facts  of  existing  human  character 
which  are  vulgarly  deemed  to  be  ultimate  and  ineradicable,"  and  that 
"the  discipline  of  the  appetites  and  affections  of  sex,"  on  which  the 
future  of  civilization  largely  rests,  is  very  far  from  an  impossibility. 

In  many  respects,  the  Oneida  Community  was  ahead  of  its  time,— 
and  even  of  ours, — but  it  is  interesting  to  note  that,  in  the  matter  of 
the  control  of  conception,  our  marriage  system  has  come  into  line  with 
the  theory  and  practice  of  Oneida;  it  cannot,  indeed,  be  said  that 
we  always  control  conception  in  accordance  with  eugenic  principles,  but 
the  fact  that  such  control  has  now  become  a  generally  accepted  habit 
of  civilization,  to  some  extent  deprives  Noyes'  criticism  of  our  marriage 
system  of  the  force  it  possessed  half  a  century  ago.  Another  change 
in  our  customs — the  advocacy,  and  even  the  practice,  of  abortion  and 
castration — would  not  have  met  with  his  approval;  he  was  strongly 
opposed  to  both,  and  with  the  high  moral  level  that  ruled  his  community, 
neither  was  necessary  to  the  maintenance  of  the  stirpiculture  that 
prevailed. 

The  Oneida  Community  endured  for  the  space  of  one  generation, 
and  came  to  an  end  in  1879,  by  no  means  through  a  recognition  of  failure, 
but  by  a  wise  deference  to  external  pressure.  Its  members,  many  of 
them  highly  educated,  continued  to  cherish  the  memory  of  the  practices 
and  ideals  of  the  Community.  Noyes  Miller  (the  author  of  The  Strike 
of  a  Sex,  and  Zugassant's  Discovery)  to  the  last,  looked  with  quiet 
confidence  to  the  time  when,  as  he  anticipated,  the  great  discovery  of 
Noyes  would  be  accepted  and  adopted  by  the  world  at  large.  Another 
member  of  the  Community  ( Henry  J.  Seymour )  wrote  of  the  Community 
long  afterwards  that  "It  was  an  anticipation  and  imperfect  miniature 
of  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven  on  earth." 

Perhaps  the  commonest  type  of  proposal  or  attempt  to 
improve  the  biological  level  of  the  race  is  by  the  exclusion  of 


THE    SCIENCE    OF    PROCREATION.  621 

certain  classes  of  degenerates  from  marriage,  or  by  the  encourage- 
ment of  better  classes  of  the  community  to  marry.  This  seems 
to  be,  at  present,  the  most  popular  form  of  eugenics,  and  in  so 
far  as  it  is  not  effected  by  compulsion  but  is  the  outcome  of  a 
voluntary  resolve  to  treat  the  question  of  the  creation  of  the 
race  with  the  jealous  care  and  guardianship  which  so  tremend- 
ously serious,  so  godlike,  a  task  involves,  it  has  much  to  be  said 
in  its  favor  and  nothing  against  it. 

But  it  is  quite  another  matter  when  the  attempt  is  made 
to  regulate  such  an  institution  as  marriage  by  law.  In  the  first 
place  we  do  not  yet  know  enough  about  the  principles  of  heredity 
and  the  transmissibility  of  pathological  states  to  enable  us  to 
formulate  sound  legislative  proposals  on  this  basis.  Even  so 
comparatively  simple  a  matter  as  the  relationship  of  tuberculosis 
to  heredity  can  scarcely  be  said  to  be  a  matter  of  common  agree- 
ment, even  if  it  can  yet  be  claimed  that  we  possess  adequate 
material  on  which  to  attain  a  common  agreement.  Supposing, 
moreover,  that  our  knowledge  on  all  these  questions  were  far 
more  advanced  than  it  is,  we  still  should  not  have  attained  a 
position  in  which  we  could  lay  down  general  propositions  regard- 
ing the  desirability  or  the  undesirability  of  certain  classes  of 
persons  procreating.  The  question  is  necessarily  an  individual 
question,  and  it  can  only  be  decided  when  all  the  circumstances 
of  the  individual  case  have  been  fairly  passed  in  review. 

The  objection  to  any  legislative  and  compulsory  regulation 
of  the  right  to  marry  is,  however,  much  more  fundamental  than 
the  consideration  that  our  knowledge  is  at  present  inadequate. 
It  lies  in  the  extraordinary  confusion,  in  the  minds  of  those  who 
advocate  such  legislation,  between  legal  marriage  and  procreation. 
The  persons  who  fall  into  such  confusion  have  not  yet  learnt  the 
alphabet  of  the  subject  they  presume  to  dictate  about,  and  are  no 
more  competent  to  legislate  than  a  child  who  cannot  tell  A  from 
B  is  competent  to  read. 

Marriage,  in  so  far  as  it  is  the  partnership  for  mutual  help 
and  consolation  of  two  people  who  in  such  partnership  are  free, 
if  they  please,  to  exercise  sexual  union,  is  an  elementary  right 
of  every  person  who  is  able  to  reason,  who  is  guilty  of  no  fraud 


622  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

or  concealment,  and  who  is  not  likely  to  injure  the  partner 
selected,  for  in  that  case  society  is  entitled  to  interfere  by  virtue 
of  its  duty  to  protect  its  members.  But  the  right  to  marry,  thus 
understood,  in  no  way  involves  the  right  to  procreate.  For 
while  marriage  per  se  only  affects  the  two  individuals  concerned, 
and  in  no  way  affects  the  State,  procreation,  on  the  other  hand, 
primarily  affects  the  community  which  is  ultimately  made  up  of 
procreated  persons,  and  only  secondarily  affects  the  two  individ- 
uals who  are  the  instruments  of  procreation.  So  that  just  as  the 
individual  couple  has  the  first  right  in  the  question  of  marriage, 
the  State  has  the  first  right  in  the  question  of  procreation.  The 
State  is  just  as  incompetent  to  lay  down  the  law  about  marriage 
as  the  individual  is  to  lay  down  the  law  about  procreation. 

That,  however,  is  only  one-half  of  the  folly  committed  by 
those  who  would  select  the  candidates  for  matrimony  by  statute. 
Let  us  suppose — as  is  not  indeed  easy  to  suppose — that  a  com- 
munity will  meekly  accept  the  abstract  prohibitions  of  the  statute 
book  and  quietly  go  home  again  when  the  registrar  of  marriages 
informs  them  that  they  are  shut  out  from  legal  matrimony  by 
the  new  table  of  prohibited  degrees.  An  explicit  prohibition  to 
procreate  within  marriage  is  an  implicit  permission  to  procreate 
outside  marriage.  Thus  the  undesirable  procreation,  instead  of 
being  carried  out  under  the  least  dangerous  conditions,  is  carried 
out  under  the  most  dangerous  conditions,  and  the  net  result  to 
the  community  is  not  a  gain  but  a  loss, 

What  seems  usually  to  happen,  in  the  presence  of  a  formal 
legislative  prohibition  against  the  marriage  of  a  particular  class, 
is  a  combination  of  various  evils.  In  part  the  law  becomes  a 
dead  letter,  in  part  it  is  evaded  by  skill  and  fraud,  in  part  it  is 
obeyed  to  give  rise  to  worse  evils.  This  happened,  for  instance, 
in  the  Terek  district  of  the  Caucasus  where,  on  the  demand  of  a 
medical  committee,  priests  were  prohibited  from  marrying  per- 
sons among  whose  relatives  or  ancestry  any  cases  of  leprosy  had 
occurred.  So  much  and  such  various  mischief  was  caused  by 
this  order  that  it  was  speedily  withdrawn.1 

1  This  example  is  brought  forward  by  Ledermann,  "Skin  Diseases 
and  Marriage,"  in  Senator  and  Kaminer,  Health  and  Disease  in  Rela- 
tion to  Marriage. 


THE    SCIENCE   OE    PROCREATION.  623 

If  we  remember  that  the  Catholic  Church  was  occupied  for 
more  than  a  thousand  years  in  the  attempt  to  impose  the  prohibi- 
tion of  marriage  on  its  priesthood, — an  educated  and  trained  body 
of  men,  who  had  every  spiritual  and  worldly  motive  to  accept  the 
prohibition,  and  were,  moreover,  brought  up  to  regard  asceticism 
as  the  best  ideal  in  life,1 — we  may  realize  how  absurd  it  is  to 
attempt  to  gain  the  same  end  by  mere  casual  prohibitions  issued 
to  untrained  people  with  no  motives  to  obey  such  prohibitions, 
and  no  ideals  of  celibacy. 

The  hopelessness  and  even  absurdity  of  effecting  the  eugenic 
improvement  of  the  race  by  merely  placing  on  the  statute  book 
prohibitions  to  certain  classes  of  people  to  enter  the  legal  bonds 
of  matrimony  as  at  present  constituted,  reveals  the  weakness  of 
those  who  undervalue  the  eugenic  importance  of  environment. 
Those  who  affirm  that  heredity  is  everything  and  environment 
nothing  seem  strangely  to  forget  that  it  is  precisely  the  lower 
classes — those  who  are  most  subjected  to  the  influence  of  bad 
environment — who  procreate  most  copiously,  most  recklessly, 
and  most  disastrously.  The  restraint  of  procreation,  and  a  con- 
comitant regard  for  heredity,  increase  pari  passu  with  improve- 
ment of  the  environment  and  rise  in  social  well-being.  If  even 
already  it  can  be  said  that  probably  fifty  per  cent,  of  sexual  inter- 
course— perhaps  the  most  proereatively  productive  moiety — takes 
place  outside  legal  marriage,  it  becomes  obvious  that  statutory 
prohibition  to  the  unfit  classes  to  refrain  from  legal  marriage 
merely  involves  their  joining  the  procreating  classes  outside  legal 
matrimony.  It  is  also  clear  that  if  we  are  to  neglect  the  factor 
of  environment,  and  leave  the  lower  social  classes  to  the 
ignorance  and  recklessness  which  are  the  result  of  such  environ- 
ment, the  only  practical  method  of  eugenics  left  open  is  that  by 
castration  and  abortion.  But  this  method — if  applied  on  a 
wholesale  scale  as  it  would  need  to  be2  and  without  reference  to 


1 1  may  here  again  refer  to  Lea's  instructive  History  of  Sacerdotal 
Celibacy. 

2  In  England,  35,000  applicants  for  admission  to  the  navy  are  an- 
nually rejected,  and  although  the  physical  requirements  for  enlistment 
in  the  army  are  nowadays  extremely  moderate,  it  is  estimated  by  Gen- 
eral Maurice  that  at  least   sixty  per   cent,  of  recruits  and  would-be 


624  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

the  consent  of  the  individual — is  entirely  opposed  to  modern 
democratic  feeling.  Thus  those  short-sighted  eugenists  who 
overlook  the  importance  of  environment  are  overlooking  the  only 
practical  channel  through  which  their  aims  can  be  realized. 
Attention  to  procreation  and  attention  to  environment  are  not, 
as  some  have  supposed,  antagonistic,  but  they  play  harmoniously 
into  each  other's  hands.  The  care  for  environment  leads  to  a 
restraint  on  reckless  procreation,  and  the  restraint  of  procreation 
leads  to  improved  environment. 

Legislation  on  marriage,  to  be  effectual,  must  be  enacted  in 
the  home,  in  the  school,  in  the  doctor's  consulting  room.  Force 
is  helpless  here;  it  is  education  that  is  needed,  not  merely 
instruction,  but  the  education  of  the  conscience  and  will,  and  the 
training  of  the  emotions. 

Legal  action  may  come  in  to  further  this  process  of  educa- 
tion, though  it  cannot  replace  it.  Thus  it  is  very  desirable  that 
when  there  has  been  a  concealment  of  serious  disease  by  a  party 
to  a  marriage  such  concealment  should  be  a  ground  for  divorce. 
Epilepsy  may  be  taken  as  typical  of  the  diseases  which  should  be 
a  bar  to  procreation,  and  their  concealment  equivalent  to  an 
annulment  of  marriage.1  In  the  United  States  the  Supreme 
Court  of  Errors  of  Connecticut  laid  it  down  in  1906  that  the 
Superior  Court  has  the  power  to  pass  a  decree  of  divorce  when 
one  of  the  parties  has  concealed  the  existence  of  epilepsy.  This 
weighty  deliverence,  it  has  been  well  said,2  marks  a  forward 
step  in  human  progress.  There  are  many  other  seriously  path- 
ological conditions  in  which  divorce  should  be  pronounced,  or 
indeed,  occur  automatically,  except  when  procreation  has  been 

reciuits  are  dismissed  as  unfit.  (See  e.g.,  William  Coates,  "The  Duty 
of  the  Medical  Profession  in  the  Prevention  of  National  Deterioration," 
British  Medical  Journal,  May  1,  1909.)  It  can  scarcely  be  claimed  that 
men  who  are  not  good  enough  for  the  army  are  good  enough  for  the 
great  task  of  creating  the  future  race. 

*  The  recognition  of  epilepsy  as  a  bar  to  procreation  is  not  recent. 
There  is  said  to  be  a  record  in  the  archives  of  the  town  of  Lucon  in 
which  epilepsy  was  adjudged  to  be  a  valid  reason  for  the  cancellation 
of  a  betrothal  {British  Medical  Journal,  Feb.  14,  1903,  p.  383). 

2  British  Medical  Journal,  April  14,  1906.  Tn  California  and  some 
other  States,  it  appears  that  deceit  regarding  health  is  a  ground  for 
the  annulment  of  marriage. 


THE    SCIENCE    OF    PROCREATION.  625 

renounced,  for  in  that  case  the  State  is  no  longer  concerned  in 
the  relationship,  except  to  punish  any  fraud  committed  by 
concealment. 

The  demand  that  a  medical  certificate  of  health  should  be  com- 
pulsory on  marriage,  has  been  especially  made  in  France.  In  1858, 
Diday,  of  Lyons,  proposed,  indeed,  that  all  persons,  without  exception, 
should  be  compelled  to  possess  a  certificate  of  health  and  disease,  a  kind 
of  sanitary  passport.  In  1872,  Bertillon  (Art.  "Demographie,"  Diction- 
naire  Encyclopedique  des  Sciences  Medicales)  advocated  the  registration, 
at  marriage,  of  the  chief  anthropological  and  pathological  traits  of  the 
contracting  parties  (height,  weight,  color  of  hair  and  eyes,  muscular 
force,  size  of  head,  condition  of  vision,  hearing,  etc.,  deformities  and 
defects,  etc.),  not  so  much,  however,  for  the  end  of  preventing  undesir- 
able marriages,  as  to  facilitate  the  study  and  comparison  of  human 
groups  at  particular  periods.  Subsequent  demands,  of  a  more  limited 
and  partial  character,  for  legal  medical  certificates  as  a  condition  of 
marriage,  have  been  made  by  Fournier  (Syphilis  et  Mariage,  1890), 
Cazalis  (he  Science  et  le  Mariage,  1890),  and  Jullien  (Blenorrhagie  et 
Mariage,  1898).  In  Austria,  Haskovec,  of  Prague  ("Contrat  Matrimonial 
et  L'Hygiene  Publique,"  Comptes-rendus  Congres  International  de  Mede- 
cine,  Lisbon,  1906,  Section  VII,  p.  600),  argues  that,  on  marriage,  a 
medical  certificate  should  be  presented,  showing  that  the  subject  is  ex- 
empt from  tuberculosis,  alcoholism,  syphilis,  gonorrhoea,  severe  mental, 
or  nervous,  or  other  degenerative  state,  likely  to  be  injurious  to  the 
other  partner,  or  to  the  offspring.  In  America,  Rosenberg  and  Aronstam 
argue  that  every  candidate  for  marriage,  male  or  female,  should  undergo 
a  strict  examination  by  a  competent  board  of  medical  examiners,  con- 
cerning ( 1 )  Family  and  Past  History  ( syphilis,  consumption,  alcoholism, 
nervous,  and  mental  diseases),  and  (2)  Status  Presens  (thorough  ex- 
amination of  all  the  organs)  ;  if  satisfactory,  a  certificate  of  matri- 
monial eligibility  would  then  be  granted.  It  is  pointed  out  that  a 
measure  of  this  kind  would  render  unnecessary  the  acts  passed  by  some 
States  for  the  punishment  by  fine,  or  imprisonment,  of  the  concealment 
of  disease.  Ellen  Key  also  considers  (Liebe  und  Ehe,  p.  436)  that  each 
party  at  marriage  should  produce  a  certificate  of  health.  "It  seems 
to  me  just  as  necessary,"  she  remarks,  elsewhere  (Century  of  the  Child, 
Ch.  I),  "to  demand  medical  testimony  concerning  capacity  for  marriage, 
as  concerning  capacity  for  military  service.  In  the  one  case,  it  is  a  mat- 
ter of  giving  life ;  in  the  other,  of  taking  it,  although  certainly  the  latter 
occasion  has  hitherto  been  considered  as  much  the  more  serious." 

The  certificate,  as  usually  advocated,  would  be  a  private,  but 
necessary  legitimation   of  the  marriage  in  the  eyes   of  the   civil  and 


626  PSYCHOLOGY    OP    SEX. 

religious  authorities.  Such  a  step,  being  required  for  the  protection 
alike  of  the  conjugal  partner  and  of  posterity,  would  involve  a  new 
legal  organization  of  the  matrimonial  contract.  That  such  demands 
are  SO  frequently  made,  is  a  significant  sign  of  the  growth  of  moral 
consciousness  in  the  community,  and  it  is  good  that  the  public  should 
be  made  acquainted  with  the  urgent  need  for  them.  But  it  is  highly 
undesirable  that  they  should,  at  present,  or,  perhaps,  ever,  be  embodied 
in  legal  codes.  What  is  needed  is  the  cultivation  of  the  feeling  of  in- 
dividual responsibility,  and  the  development  of  social  antagonism  towards 
those  individuals  who  fail  to  recognize  their  responsibility.  It  is  the 
reality  of  marriage,  and  not  its  mere  legal  forms,  that  it  is  necessary 
to  act  upon. 

The  voluntary  method  is  the  only  sound  way  of  approach 
in  this  matter.  Duclaux  considered  that  the  candidate  for 
marriage  should  possess  a  certificate  of  health  in  much  the  same 
way  as  the  candidate  for  life  assurance,  the  question  of  profes- 
sional secrecy,  as  well  as  that  of  compulsion,  no  more  coming  into 
one  question  than  into  the  other.  There  is  no  reason  why  such 
certificates,  of  an  entirely  voluntary  character,  should  not 
become  customary  among  those  persons  who  are  sufficiently 
enlightened  to  realize  all  the  grave  personal,  family,  and  social 
issues  involved  in  marriage.  The  system  of  eugenic  certifica- 
tion, as  originated  and  developed  by  Galton,  will  constitute  a 
valuable  instrument  for  raising  the  moral  consciousness  in  this 
matter.  Galton's  eugenic  certificates  would  deal  mainly  with 
the  natural  virtues  of  superior  hereditary  breed — -"the  public 
recognition  of  a  natural  nobility" — but  they  would  include  the 
question  of  personal  health  and  personal  aptitude.1 

To  demand  compulsory  certificates  of  health  at  marriage  is 
indeed  to  begin  at  the  wrong  end.  It  would  not  only  lead  to 
evasions  and  antagonisms  but  would  probably  call  forth  a 
reaction.  It  is  first  necessary  to  create  an  enthusiasm  for 
health,  a  moral  conscience  in  matters  of  procreation,  together 
with,  on  the  scientific  side,  a  general  habit  of  registering  the 
anthropological,  psychological,  and  pathological  data  concerning 


i  Sir  F.  Galton,  Inquiries  Into  Human  Faculty,  Everyman's  Li- 
brary edition,  pp.  211  et  seq.;  cf.  Galton's  collected  Essays  in  Eugenics, 
recently  published  by  the  Eugenics  Education  Society. 


THE   SCIENCE    OF    PROCREATION.  627 

the  individual,  from  birth  onwards,  altogether  apart  from  mar- 
riage. The  earlier  demands  of  Diday  and  Bertillon  were  thus 
not  only  on  a  sounder  but  also  a  more  practicable  basis.  If  such 
records  were  kept  from  birth  for  every  child,  there  would  be  no 
need  for  special  examination  at  marriage,  and  many  incidental 
ends  would  be  gained.  There  is  difficulty  at  present  in  obtaining 
such  records  from  the  moment  of  birth,  and,  so  far  as  I  am 
aware,  no  attempts  have  yet  been  made  to  establish  their  system- 
atic registration.  But  it  is  quite  possible  to  begin  at  the  begin- 
ning of  school  life,  and  this  is  now  done  at  many  schools  and 
colleges  in  England,  America,  and  elsewhere,  more  especially  as 
regards  anthropological,  physiological,  and  psychological  data, 
each  child  being  submitted  to  a  thorough  and  searching  anthropo- 
metric examination,  and  thus  furnished  with  a  systematic  state- 
ment of  his  physical  condition.1  This  examination  needs  to  be 
standardized  and  generalized,  and  repeated  at  fixed  intervals. 
"Every  individual  child/'  as  is  truly  stated  by  Dr.  Dukes,  the 
Physician  to  Rugby  School,  "on  his  entrance  to  a  public  school 
should  be  as  carefully  and  as  thoroughly  examined  as  if  it  were 
for  life  insurance."  If  this  procedure  were  general  from  an  early 
age,  there  would  be  no  hardship  in  the  production  of  the  record  at 
marriage,  and  no  opportunity  for  fraud.  The  dossier  of  each 
person  might  well  be  registered  by  the  State,  as  wills  already  are, 
and,  as  in  the  case  of  wills,  become  freely  open  to  students  when  a 
century  had  elapsed.  Until  this  has  been  done  during  several 
centuries  our  knowledge  of  eugenics  will  remain  rudimentary. 

There  can  be  little  doubt  that  the  eugenic  attitude  towards  mar- 
riage, and  the  responsibility  of  the  individual  for  the  future  of  the  race, 
is  becoming  more  recognized.  It  is  constantly  happening  that  persons, 
about  to  marry,  approach  the  physician  in  a  state  of  serious  anxiety  on 
this  point.  Urquhart,  indeed  {Journal  of  Mental  Science,  April,  1907, 
p.  277),  believes  that  marriages  are  seldom  broken  off  on  this  ground; 
this  seems,  however,  too  pessimistic  a  view,  and  even  when  the  mar- 
riage is  not  broken  off  the  resolve  is  often  made  to  avoid  procreation. 


1  For  some  account  of  the  methods  and  results  of  the  work  in 
*,<3hools,  see  Bertram  C.  A.  Windle,  "Anthropometric  Work  in  Schools," 
Medical  Magazine,  Feb.,  1894. 


628  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

Houston.,  who  emphasizes  (Hygiene  of  the  2[i)id,  p.  74)  the  importance 
of  "inquiries  by  each  of  the  parties  to  the  life-contract,  by  their  parents 
and  their  doctors,  as  to  heredity,  temperament,  and  health,"  is  more 
hopeful  of  the  results  than  Urquhart.  "I  have  been  very  much  im- 
pressed, of  late  years,"  he  writes  (Journal  of  Mental  Science,  Oct.,  1907, 
p.  710),  "with  the  way  in  which  this  subject  is  taking  possession  of 
intelligent  people,  by  the  number  of  times  one  is  consulted  by  young 
men  and  young  women,  proposing  to  marry,  or  by  their  fathers  or 
mothers.  I  used  to  have  the  feeling  in  the  back  of  my  mind,  when 
I  was  consulted,  that  it  did  not  matter  what  I  said,  it  would  not  make 
any  difference.  But  it  is  making  a  difference;  and  I,  and  others,  could 
tell  of  scores  of  marriages  which  were  put  off  in  consequence  of  psychi- 
atric medical  advice." 

Ellen  Key,  also,  refers  to  the  growing  tendency  among  both  men 
and  women,  to  be  influenced  by  eugenic  consideration  in  forming  partner- 
ships for  life  (Century  of  the  Child,  Ch.  I).  The  recognition  of  the 
eugenic  attitude  towards  marriage,  the  quickening  of  the  social  and 
individual  conscience  in  matters  of  heredity,  as  also  the  systematic  in- 
troduction of  certification  and  registration,  will  be  furthered  by  the 
growing  tendency  to  the  socialization  of  medicine,  and,  indeed,  in  its 
absence  would  be  impossible.  ( See  e.g.,  Havelock  Ellis,  The  Nationaliza- 
tion of  Health.)  The  growth  of  the  State  Medical  Organization  of  Health 
is  steady  and  continuous,  and  is  constantly  covering  a  larger  field.  The 
day  of  the  private  practitioner  of  medicine — who  was  treated,  as  Duclaux 
(L'Hygicne  Sociale,  p.  263)  put  it,  "like  a  grocer,  whose  shop  the  cus- 
tomer may  enter  and  leave  as  he  pleases,  and  when  he  pleases" — will, 
doubtless,  soon  be  over.  It  is  now  beginning  to  be  felt  that  health  is  far 
too  serious  a  matter,  not  only  from  the  individual  but  also  from  the 
social  point  of  view,  to  be  left  to  private  caprice.  There  is,  indeed,  a 
tendency,  in  some  quarters,  to  fear  that  some  day  society  may  rush  to 
the  opposite  extreme,  and  bow  before  medicine  with  the  same  unreasoning 
deference  that  it  once  bowed  before  theology.  That  danger  is  still  very 
remote,  nor  is  it  likely,  indeed,  that  medicine  will  ever  claim  any  au- 
thority of  this  kind.  The  spirit  of  medicine  has,  notoriously,  been 
rather  towards  the  assertion  of  scepticism  than  of  dogma,  and  the 
fanatics  in  this  field  will  always  be  in  a  hopelessly  small  minority. 

The  general  introduction  of  authentic  personal  records 
covering  all  essential  data — hereditary,  anthropometric  and 
pathological — cannot  fail  to  be  a  force  on  the  side  of  positive 
as  well  as  of  negative  eugenics,  for  it  would  tend  to  promote 
the  procreation  of  the  fit  as  well  as  restrict  that  of  the  unfit, 
without  any  legislative  compulsion.     With  the  growth  of  educa- 


THE    SCIENCE    OP    PROCREATION.  629 

tion  a  regard  for  such  records  as  a  preliminary  to  marriage 
would  become  as  much  a  matter  of  course  as  once  was  the  regard 
to  the  restrictions  imposed  by  Canon  law,  and  as  still  is  a  regard 
to  money  or  to  caste.  A  woman  can  usually  refrain  from  marry- 
ing a  man  with  no  money  and  no  prospects;  a  man  may  be 
passionately  in  love  with  a  woman  of  lower  class  than  himself 
but  he  seldom  marries  her.  It  needs  but  a  clear  general  per- 
ception of  all  that  is  involved  in  heredity  and  health  to  make 
eugenic  considerations  equally  influential. 

A  discriminating  regard  to  the  quality  of  offspring  will  act 
beneficially  on  the  side  of  positive  eugenics  by  substituting  the 
pernicious  tendency  to  put  a  premium  on  excess  of  childbirth  by 
the  more  rational  method  of  putting  a  premium  on  the  quality 
of  the  child.  It  has  been  one  of  the  most  unfortunate  results 
of  the  mania  for  protesting  against  that  decline  of  the  birthrate 
which  is  always  and  everywhere  the  result  of  civilization,  that 
there  has  been  a  tendency  to  offer  special  social  or  pecuniary 
advantages  to  the  parents  of  large  families.  Since  large  fam- 
ilies tend  to  be  degenerate,  and  to  become  a  tax  on  the  community, 
since  rapid  pregnancies  in  succession  are  not  only  a  serious  drain 
on  the  strength  of  the  mother  but  are  now  known  to  depreciate 
seriously  the  quality  of  the  offspring,  and  since,  moreover,  it  is 
in  large  families  that  disease  and  mortality  chiefly  prevail,  all  the 
interests  of  the  community  are  against  the  placing  of  any 
premium  on  large  families,  even  in  the  case  of  parents  of  good 
stock.  The  interests  of  the  State  are  bound  up  not  with  the 
quantity  but  with  the  quality  of  its  citizens,  and  the  premium 
should  be  placed  not  on  the  families  that  reach  a  certain  size  but 
on  the  individual  children  that  reach  a  certain  standard;  the 
attainment  of  this  standard  could  well  be  based  on  observations 
made  from  birth  to  the  fifth  year.  A  premium  on  this  basis 
would  be  as  beneficial  to  a  State  as  that  on  the  merely  numerical 
basis  is  pernicious. 

This  consideration  applies  with  still  greater  force  to  the 
proposals  for  the  "systematic  endowment  of  motherhood"  of 
which  we  hear  more  and  more.  So  moderate  and  judicious  a 
social  reformer  as  Mr.  Sidney  Webb  writes :   "We  shall  have  to 


630  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

face  the  problem  of  the  systematic  endowment  of  motherhood, 
and  place  this  most  indispensable  of  all  professions  upon  an 
honorable  economic  basis.  At  present  it  is  ignored  as  an  occupa- 
tion, unremunerated,  and  in  no  way  honored  by  the  State."1 
True  as  this  statement  is,  it  must  always  be  remembered  that  an 
indispensable  preliminary  to  any  proposal  for  the  endowment 
of  motherhood  by  the  State  is  a  clear  conception  of  the  kind  of 
motherhood  which  the  State  requires.  To  endow  the  reckless 
and  indiscriminate  motherhood  which  we  see  around  us,  to 
encourage,  that  is,  by  State  aid,  the  production  of  citizens  a 
large  proportion  of  whom  the  State,  if  it  dared,  would  like  to 
destroy  as  unfit,  is  too  ridiculous  a  proposal  to  deserve  discus- 
sion.2 The  only  sound  reason,  indeed,  for  the  endowment  of 
motherhood  is  that  it  would  enable  the  State,  in  its  own  interests, 
to  further  the  natural  selection  of  the  fit. 

As  to  the  positive  qualities  which  the  State  is  entitled  to 
endow  in  its  encouragement  of  motherhood,  it  is  still  too  early 
to  speak  with  complete  assurance.  Negative  eugenics  tends  to  be 
ahead  of  positive  eugenics ;  it  is  easier  to  detect  bad  stocks  than 
to  be  quite  sure  of  good  stocks.  Both  on  the  scientific  side  and 
on  the  social  side,  however,  we  are  beginning  to  attain  a  clearer 
realization  of  the  end  to  be  attained  and  a  more  precise  knowl- 
edge of  the  methods  of  attaining  it.3 

Even  when  we  have  gained  a  fairly  clear  conception  of  the 
stocks  and  the  individuals  which  we  are  justified  in  encouraging 
to  undertake  the  task  of  producing  fit  citizens  for  the  State,  the 
problems  of  procreation  are  by  no  means  at  an  end.     Before  we 


1  The  most  notable  steps  in  this  direction  have  been  taken  in 
Germany.  For  an  account  of  the  experiment  at  Karlsruhe,  see  Die 
Neue  Generation,  Dec,  1908. 

2  Wiethknudsen  (as  quoted  in  gexual-Probleme,  Dec,  1908,  p.  837) 
speaks  strongly,  but  not  too  strongly,  concerning  the  folly  of  any  indis- 
criminate endowment  of  procreation. 

3  On  the  scientific  side,  in  addition  to  the  fruitful  methods  of 
statistical  biometrics,  which  have  already  been  mentioned,  much  promise 
attaches  to  work  along  the  lines  initiated  by  Mendel;  see  W.  Bateson, 
Mendel's  Principles  of  Heredity,  1909 ;  also,  W.  H.  Lock,  Recent  Progress 
in  the  Study  of  Variation,  Heredity,  and  Evolution,  and  R.  C.  Punnett, 
Mendelism,  1907  (American  edition,  with  interesting  preface  by  Gaylord 
Wilshire,  from  the  Socialistic  point  of  view,  1909). 


THE    SCIENCE    OF    PROCREATION.  631 

can  so  much  as  inquire  what  are  the  conditions  under  which 
selected  individuals  may  best  procreate,  there  is  still  the  initial 
question  to  be  decided  whether  those  individuals  are  both  fertile 
and  potent,  for  this  is  not  guaranteed  by  the  fact  that  they 
belong  to  good  stocks,  nor  is  even  the  fact  that  a  man  and  a 
woman  are  fertile  with  other  persons  any  positive  proof  that  they 
will  be  fertile  with  each  other.  Among  the  large  masses  of  the 
population  who  do  not  seek  to  make  their  unions  legal  until 
those  unions  have  proved  fertile,  this  difficulty  is  settled  in  a 
simple  and  practical  manner.  The  question  is,  however,  a 
serious  and  hazardous  one,  in  the  present  state  of  the  marriage 
law  in  most  countries,  for  those  classes  which  are  accustomed  to 
bind  themselves  in  legal  marriage  without  any  knowledge  of  their 
potency  and  fertility  with  each  other.  The  matter  is  mostly  left 
to  chance,  and  as  legal  marriage  cannot  usually  be  dissolved  on 
the  ground  that  there  are  no  offspring,  even  although  procreation 
is  commonly  declared  to  be  the  chief  end  of  marriage,  the  question 
assumes  much  gravity.  The  ordinary  range  of  sterility  is  from 
seven  to  fifteen  per  cent,  of  all  marriages,  and  in  a  very  large 
proportion  of  these  it  is  a  source  of  great  concern.  This  could 
be  avoided,  in  some  measure,  by  examination  before  marriage, 
and  almost  altogether  by  ordaining  that,  as  it  is  only  through 
offspring  that  a  marriage  has  any  concern  for  the  State,  a  legal 
marriage  could  be  dissolved,  after  a  certain  period,  at  the  will  of 
either  of  the  parties,  in  the  absence  of  such  offspring. 

It  was  formerly  supposed  that  when  a  union  proved  infertile,  it 
was  the  wife  who  was  at  fault.  That  belief  is  long  since  exploded, 
but,  even  yet,  a  man  is  generally  far  more  concerned  about  his  potency, 
that  is,  his  ability  to  perform  the  mechanical  act  of  coitus,  than  about 
his  fertility,  that  is,  his  ability  to  produce  living  spermatozoa,  though 
the  latter  condition  is  a  much  more  common  source  of  sterility.  "Any 
man,"  says  Arthur  Cooper  (British  Medical  Journal,  May  11,  1907), 
"who  has  any  sexual  defect  or  malformation,  or  who  has  suffered  from 
any  disease  or  injury  of  the  genito-urinary  organs,  even  though  compara- 
tively trivial  or  one-sided,  and  although  his  copulative  power  may  be 
unimpaired,  should  be  looked  upon  as  possibly  sterile,  until  some  sort 
of  evidence  to  the  contrary  has  been  obtained."  In  case  of  a  sterile 
marriage,  the  possible  cause  should  first  be  investigated  in  the  husband, 


632  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SES. 

for  it  is  comparatively  easy  to  examine  the  semen,  and  to  ascertain  if  it 
contains  active  spermatozoa.  Prinzing,  in  a  comprehensive  study  of 
sterile  marriages  ("Die  Sterilen  Ehen,"  Zeitschrift  fur  Sozialwissen- 
schaft,  1904,  Heft  1  and  2 ) ,  states  that  in  two-fifths  of  sterile  marriages 
the  man  is  at  fault;  one-third  of  such  marriages  are  the  result  of 
venereal  diseases  in  the  husband  himself,  or  transmitted  to  the  wife. 
Gonorrhoea  is  not  now  considered  so  important  a  cause  of  sterility  as  it 
was  a  few  years  ago;  Schenk  makes  it  responsible  for  only  about  thir- 
teen per  cent,  sterile  marriages  (cf.  Kisch,  The  Seconal  Life  of  Woman). 
Pinkus  (Archiv  fur  Gynalcologie,  1907)  found  that  of  nearly  five  hun- 
dred eases  in  which  he  examined  both  partners,  in  24.4  per  cent,  cases, 
the  sterility  was  directly  due  to  the  husband,  and  in  15.8  per  cent, 
cases,  indirectly  due,  because  caused  by  gonorrhoea  with  which  he  had 
infected  his  wife. 

When  sterility  is  due  to  a  defect  in  the  husband's  spermatozoa, 
and  is  not  discovered,  as  it  usually  might  be,  before  marriage,  the 
question  of  impregnating  the  wife  by  other  methods  has  occasionally 
arisen.  Divorce  on  the  ground  of  sterility  is  not  possible,  and,  even  if 
it  were,  the  couple,  although  they  wish  to  have  a  child,  have  not  usually 
any  wish  to  separate.  Under  these  circumstances,  in  order  to  secure  the 
desired  end,  without  departing  from  widely  accepted  rules  of  morality, 
the  attempt  is  occasionally  made  to  effect  artificial  fecundation  by  in- 
jecting the  semen  from  a  healthy  male.  Attempts  have  been  made  to 
■effect  artificial  fecundation  by  various  distinguished  men,  from  John 
Hunter  to  Schwalbe,  but  it  is  nearly  always  very  difficult  to  effect,  and 
often  impossible.  This  is  easy  to  account  for,  if  we  recall  what  has  al- 
ready been  pointed  out  (ante  p.  577)  concerning  the  influence  of  erotic 
excitement  in  the  woman  in  securing  conception;  it  is  obviously  a 
serious  task  for  even  the  most  susceptible  woman  to  evoke  erotic  en- 
thusiasm a  propos  of  a  medical  syringe.  Schwalbe,  for  instance,  records 
a  case  (Deutsche  Medizinisches  Wochenschrift,  Aug.,  1908,  p.  510)  in 
which, — in  consequence  of  the  husband's  sterility  and  the  wife's  anxiety, 
with  her  husband's  consent,  to  be  impregnated  by  the  semen  of  another 
man, — he  made  repeated  careful  attempts  to  effect  artificial  fecundation; 
these  attempts  were,  however,  fruitless,  and  the  three  parties  concerned 
finally  resigned  themselves  to  the  natural  method  of  intercourse,  which 
was  successful.  In  another  case,  recorded  by  Schwalbe,  in  which  the 
husband  was  impotent  but  not  sterile,  six  attempts  were  made  to  effect 
artificial  fecundation,  and  further  efforts  abandoned  on  account  of  the 
disgust  of  all  concerned. 

Opinion,  on  the  whole,  has  been  opposed  to  the  practice  of  artificial 
fecundation,  even  apart  from  the  question  of  the  probabilities  of  success. 
Thus,  in  France,  where  there  is  a  considerable  literature  on  the  subject, 
f,he   Paris   Medical    Faculty,    in    1885,   after   some   hesitation,    refused 


THE    SCIENCE    OF    PROCREATION.  633 

Gerard's  thesis  on  the  history  of  artificial  fecundation,  afterwards  pub- 
lished independently.  In  1883,  the  Bordeaux  legal  tribunal  declared  that 
artificial  fecundation  was  illegitimate,  and  a  social  danger.  In  1897, 
the  Holy  See  also  pronounced  that  the  practice  is  unlawful  ("Artificial 
Fecundation  before  the  Inquisition,"  British  Medical  Journal,  March  5, 
1898).  Apart,  altogether,  from  this  attitude  of  medicine,  law,  and 
Church,  it  would  certainly  seem  that  those  who  desire  offspring  would 
do  well,  as  a  rule,  to  adopt  the  natural  method,  which  is  also  the  best, 
or  else  to  abandon  to  others  the  task  of  procreation,  for  which  they 
are  not  adequately  equipped. 

When  we  have  ascertained  that  two  individuals  both  belong 
to  sound  and  healthy  stocks,  and,  further,  that  they  are  them- 
selves both  apt  for  procreation,  it  still  remains  to  consider  the 
conditions  under  which  they  may  best  effect  procreation.1 
There  arises,  for  instance,  the  question,  often  asked,  What  is  the 
best  age  for  procreation? 

The  considerations  which  weigh  in  answering  this  question 
are  of  two  different  orders,  physiological,  and  social  or  moral. 
That  is  to  say,  that  it  is  necessary,  on  the  one  hand,  that  physical 
maturity  should  have  been  fully  attained,  and  the  sexual  cells 
completely  developed;  while,  on  the  other  hand,  it  is  necessary 
that  the  man  shall  have  become  able  to  support  a  family,  and  that 
both  partners  shall  have  received  a  training  in  life  adequate  to 
undertake  the  responsibilities  and  anxieties  involved  in  the  rear- 
ing of  children.  While  there  have  been  variations  at  different 
times,  it  scarcely  appears  that,  on  the  whole,  the  general  opinion 
as  to  the  best  age  for  procreation  has  greatly  varied  in  Europe 
during  many  centuries.  Hesiod  indeed  said  that  a  woman 
should  marry  about  fifteen  and  a  man  about  thirty,2  but 
obstetricians  have  usually  concluded  that,  in  the  interests  alike 
of  the  parents  and  their  offspring,  the  procreative  life  should  not 


1  The  study  of  the  right  conditions  for  procreation  is  very  ancient. 
In  modern  times  we  find  that  even  the  very  first  French  medical  book 
in  the  vulgar  tongue,  the  Regime  du  Corps,  written  by  Alebrand  of 
Florence  (who  was  physician  to  the  King  of  France),  in  1256,  is  largely 
devoted  to  this  matter,  concerning  which  it  gives  much  sound  advice. 
See  J.  B.  Soalhat,  Les  J  dees  de  Maistre  Alebrand  de  Florence  sur  la 
Puericulture,  These  de  Paris,  1908. 

2  Hesiod,  Works  and  Days,  II,  690-70Q, 


634  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

begin  in  women  before  twenty  and  in  men  before  twenty-five.1 
After  thirty  in  women  and  after  thirty-five  or  forty  in  men  it 
seems  probable  that  the  best  conditions  for  procreation  begin  to 
decline.2  At  the  present  time,  in  England  and  several  other 
civilized  countries,  the  tendency  has  been  for  the  age  of  marriage 
to  fall  at  an  increasingly  late  age,  on  the  average  some  years 
later  than  that  usually  fixed  as  the  most  favorable  age  for  the 
commencement  of  the  procreative  life.  But,  on  the  whole,  the 
average  seldom  departs  widely  from  the  accepted  standard,  and 
there  seems  no  good  reason  why  we  should  desire  to  modify  this 
general  tendency. 

At  the  same  time,  it  by  no  means  follows  that  wide  variations, 
under  special  circumstances,  may  not  only  be  permissible,  but  desirable. 
The  male  is  capable  of  procreating,  in  some  cases,  from  about  the  age 
of  thirteen  until  far  beyond  eighty,  and  at  this  advanced  age,  the 
offspring,  even  if  not  notable  for  great  physical  robustness,  may  possess 
high  intellectual  qualities.  ( See  e.g.,  Havelock  Ellis,  A  Study  of  British 
Genius,  pp.  120  et  seq.)  The  range  of  the  procreative  age  in  women 
begins  earlier  (sometimes  at  eight),  though  it  usually  ceases  by  fifty, 
or  earlier,  in  only  rare  cases  continuing  to  sixty  or  beyond.  Cases  have 
been  reported  of  pregnancy,  or  childbirth,  at  the  age  of  fifty-nine  {e.g., 
Lancet,  Aug.  5,  1905,  p.  419).  Lepage  (Comptes-rendus  Societe  d'Oo- 
stetrique  de  Paris,  Oct.,  1903)  reports  a  case  of  a  primipara  of  fifty- 
seven;    the  child  was  stillborn.    Kisch  (Sexual  Life  of  Woman,  Part  II) 


1  This  has  long  been  the  accepted  opinion  of  medical  authorities, 
as  may  be  judged  by  the  statements  brought  together  two  centuries  ago 
by  Schurig,  Parthenologia,  pp.  22-25. 

2  The  statement  that,  on  the  average,  the  best  age  for  procreation 
in  men  is  before,  rather  than  after,  forty,  by  no  means  assumes  the 
existence  of  any  "critical"  age  in  men  analogous  to  the  menopause  in 
women.  This  is  sometimes  asserted,  but  there  is  no  agreement  in  re- 
gard to  it.  Restif  de  la  Bretonne  (Monsieur  Nicolas,  vol.  x,  p.  176) 
said  that  at  the  age  of  forty  delicacy  of  sentiment  begins  to  go. 
Fiirbringer  believes  (Senator  and  Kaminer,  Health  and  Disease  in  Re- 
lation to  Marriage,  vol.  i,  p.  222)  that  there  is  a  decisive  turn  in  a 
man's  life  in  the  sixth  decade,  or  the  middle  of  the  fifth,  when  desire 
and  potency  diminish.  J.  F.  Sutherland  also  states  (Comptes-rendus 
Congres  International  de  M6decine,  1900,  Section  de  Psychiatrie,  p.  471) 
that  there  is,  in  men,  about  the  fifty-fifth  year,  a  change  analogous  to 
the  menopause  in  women,  but  only  in  a  certain  proportion  of  men.  It 
would  appear  that  in  most  men  the  decline  of  sexual  feeling  and  potency 
is  very  gradual,  and  at  first  manifests  itself  in  increased  power  of 
control. 


THE    SCIENCE    01?    PROCREATION.  635 

refers  to  cases  of  pregnancy  in  elderly  women,  and  various  references 
are  given  in  British  Medical  Journal,  Aug.  8,  1903,  p.  325. 

Of  more  importance  is  the  question  of  early  pregnancy.  Several 
investigators  have  devoted  their  attention  to  this  question.  Thus,  Spitta 
(in  a  Marburg  Inaugural  Dissertation,  1895)  reviewed  the  clinical 
history  of  260  labors  in  prhniparse  of  18  and  under,  as  observed  at  the 
Marburg  Maternity.  He  found  that  the  general  health  during  pregnancy 
was  not  below  the  average  of  pregnant  women,  while  the  mortality  of 
the  child  at  birth  and  during  the  following  weeks  was  not  high,  and 
the  mortality  of  the  mother  was  by  no  means  high.  Picard  (in  a  Paris 
thesis,  1903)  has  studied  childbirth  in  thirty-eight  mothers  below  the 
age  of  sixteen.  He  found  that,  although  the  pelvis  is  certainly  not  yet 
fully  developed  in  very  young  girls,  the  joints  and  bones  are  much  more 
yielding  than  in  the  adult,  so  that  parturition,  far  from  being  more 
difficult,  is  usually  rapid  and  easy.  The  process  of  labor  itself,  is  essen- 
tially normal  in  these  cases,  and,  even  when  abnormalities  occur  (low 
insertion  of  the  placenta  is  a  common  anomaly)  it  is  remarkable  that 
the  patients  do  not  suffer  from  them  in  the  way  common  among  older 
women.  The  average  weight  of  the  child  was  three  kilogrammes,  or 
about  6  pounds,  9  ounces;  it  sometimes  required  special  care  during  the 
first  few  days  after  birth,  perhaps  because  labor  in  these  eases  is  some- 
times slow.  The  recovery  of  the  mother  was,  in  every  case,  absolutely 
normal,  and  the  fact  that  these  young  mothers  become  pregnant  again 
more  readily  than  primipara?  of  a  more  mature  age,  further  contributes 
to  show  that  childbirth  below  the  age  of  sixteen  is  in  no  way  injurious 
to  the  mother.  Gache  (Annales  de  Gynecologic  et  d'Obstetrique,  Dec, 
1904)  has  attended  ninety-one  labors  of  mothers  under  seventeen,  in 
the  Rawson  Hospital,  Buenos  Ayres;  they  were  of  so-called  Latin  race, 
mostly  Spanish  or  Italian.  Gache  found  that  these  young  mothers  were 
by  no  means  more  exposed  than  others  to  abortion  or  to  other  compli- 
cations of  pregnancy.  Except  in  four  cases  of  slightly  contracted  pel- 
vis, delivery  Avas  normal,  though  rather  longer  than  in  older  primiparse. 
Damage  to  the  soft  parts  was,  however,  rare,  and,  when  it  occurred,  in 
every  case  rapidly  healed.  The  average  weight  of  the  child  was  3,039 
grammes,  or  nearly  6%  pounds.  It  may  be  noted  that  most  observers 
find  that  very  early  pregnancies  occur  in  women  who  begin  to  menstruate 
at  an  unusually  early  age,  that  is,  some  years  before  the  early  pregnancy 
occurs. 

It  is  clear,  however,  that  young  mothers  do  remarkably  well, 
while  there  is  no  doubt  whatever  that  they  bear  unusually  fine  infants. 
Kleinwachter,  indeed,  found  that  the  younger  the  mother,  the  biggei 
the  child.  It  is  not  only  physically  that  the  children  of  young  mothers 
are  superior.  Marro  has  found  (Puberta,  p.  257)  that  the  children  of 
mothers  under  21  are  superior  to  those  of  older  mothers  both  in  con- 


636  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

duct  and  intelligence,  provided  the  fathers  are  not  too  old  or  too  young. 
The  detailed  records  of  individual  cases  confirm  these  results,  both 
as  regards  mother  and  child.  Thus,  Milner  (Lancet,  June  7,  1902) 
records  a  case  of  pregnancy  in  a  girl  of  fourteen;  the  labor  pains 
were  very  mild,  and  delivery  was  easy.  E.  B.  Wales,  of  New  Jer- 
sey, has  recorded  the  history  (reproduced  in  Medical  Reprints,  Sept.  15, 
1890)  of  a  colored  girl  who  became  pregnant  at  the  age  of  eleven.  She 
was  of  medium  size,  rather  tall  and  slender,  but  well  developed,  and 
began  to  menstruate  at  the  age  of  ten.  She  was  in  good  health  and 
spirits  during  pregnancy,  and  able  to  work.  Delivery  was  easy  and 
natural,  not  notably  prolonged,  and  apparently  not  unduly  painful,  for 
there  were  no  moans  or  agitation.  The  child  was  a  fine,  healthy  boy, 
weighing  not  less  than  eleven  pounds.  Mother  and  child  both  did  well, 
and  there  was  a  great  flow  of  milk.  Whiteside  Robertson  (British  Medi- 
cal Journal,  Jan.  18,  1902)  has  recorded  a  case  of  pregnancy  at  the  age 
of  thirteen,  in  a  Colonial  girl  of  British  origin  in  Cape  Colony,  which 
is  notable  from  other  points  of  view.  During  pregnancy,  she  was  anaemic, 
and  appeared  to  be  of  poor  development  and  doubtfully  normal  pelvic 
conformation.  Yet  delivery  took  place  naturally,  at  full  term,  without 
difficulty  or  injury,  and  the  lying-in  period  was  in  every  way  satisfactory. 
The  baby  was  well-proportioned,  and  weighed  7%  pounds.  "I  have 
rarely  seen  a  primipara  enjoy  easier  labor,"  concluded  Robertson,  "and 
I  have  never  seen  one  look  forward  to  the  happy  realization  of  mother- 
hood with  greater  satisfaction." 

The  facts  brought  forward  by  obstetricians  concerning  the  good 
results  of  early  pregnancy,  as  regards  both  mother  and  child,  have  not 
yet  received  the  attention  they  deserve.  They  are,  however,  confirmed 
by  many  general  tendencies  which  are  now  fairly  well  recognized.  The 
significant  fact  is  known,  for  instance,  that  in  mothers  over  thirty,  the 
proportion  of  abortions  and  miscarriages  is  twice  as  great  as  in  mothers 
between  the  ages  of  fifteen  and  twenty,  who  also  are  superior  in  this 
respect  to  mothers  between  the  ages  of  twenty  and  thirty  (Sfatistischer 
Jahrbuch,  Budapest,  1905).  It  was,  again,  proved  by  Matthews  Dun- 
can, in  his  Groulstonian  lecture,  that  the  chances  of  sterility  in  a  woman 
increase  with  increase  of  age.  It  has,  further,  been  shown  (Kisch, 
Sexual  Life  of  Woman,  Part  II)  that  the  older  a  woman  at  marriage, 
the  greater  the  average  interval  before  the  first  delivery,  a  tendency 
which  seems  to  indicate  that  it  is  the  very  young  woman  who  is  in  the 
condition  most  apt  for  procreation;  Kisch  is  not,  indeed,  inclined  to 
think  that  this  applies  to  women  below  twenty,  but  the  fact,  observed 
by  other  obstetricians,  that  mothers  under  eighteen  tend  to  become  preg- 
nant again  at  an  unusually  short  interval,  goes  far  to  neutralize  the 
exception  made  by  Kisch.  It  may  also  be  pointed  out  that,  among 
children  of  very  young  mothers,  the  sexes  are  more  nearly  equal  in  num- 


THE    SCIENCE   OE    PROCREATION.  637 

ber  than  is  the  case  with  older  mothers.  This  would  seem  to  indicate 
that  we  are  here  in  presence  of  a  normal  equilibrium  which  will  decrease 
as  the  age  of  the  mother  is  progressively  disturbed  in  an  abnormal 
direction. 

The  facility  of  parturition  at  an  early  age,  it  may  be  noted,  cor- 
responds to  an  equal  facility  in  physical  sexual  intercourse,  a  fact  that 
is  often  overlooked.  In  Russia,  where  marriage  still  takes  place  early, 
it  was  formerly  common  when  the  woman  was  only  twelve  or  thirteen, 
and  Guttceit  (Dreissig  Jahre  Praaeis,  vol.  i,  p.  324)  says  that  he  was 
assured  by  women  who  married  at  this  age  that  the  first  coitus  pre- 
sented no  especial  difficulties. 

There  is  undoubtedly,  at  the  present  time,  a  considerable  amount 
of  prejudice  against  early  motherhood.  In  part,  this  is  due  to  a  failure 
to  realize  that  women  are  sexually  much  more  precocious  than  men, 
physically  as  well  as  psychically  (see  ante  p.  35).  The  difference  is 
about  five  years.  This  difference  has  been  virtually  recognized  for 
thousands  of  years,  in  the  ancient  belief  that  the  age  of  election  for 
procreation  is  about  twenty,  or  less,  for  women,  but  about  twenty-five 
for  men;  and  it  has  more  lately  been  affirmed  by  the  discovery  that, 
while  the  male  is  never  capable  of  generation  before  thirteen,  the  female 
may,  in  occasional  instances,  become  pregnant  at  eight.  (Some  of  the 
recorded  examples  are  quoted  by  Kisch.)  In  part,  also,  there  is  an 
objection  to  the  assumption  of  responsibilities  so  serious  as  those  of 
motherhood  by  a  young  girl,  and  there  is  the  very  reasonable  feeling 
that  the  obligations  of  a  permanent  marriage  tie  ought  not  to  be  under- 
taken at  an  early  age.  On  the  other  hand,  apart  from  the  physical 
advantages,  as  regards  both  mother  and  infant,  on  the  side  of  early 
pregnancies,  it  is  an  advantage  for  the  child  to  have  a  young  mother, 
who  can  devote  herself  sympathetically  and  unreservedly  to  its  inter- 
ests, instead  of  presenting  the  pathetic  spectacle  we  so  often  witness 
in  the  middle-aged  woman  who  turns  to  motherhood  when  her  youth  and 
mental  flexibility  are  gone,  and  her  habits  and  tastes  have  settled  into 
other  grooves;  it  has  sometimes  been  a  great  blessing  even  to  the  very 
greatest  men,  like  Goethe,  to  have  had  a  youthful  mother.  It  would 
also,  in  many  cases,  be  a  great  advantage  for  the  woman  herself  if 
she  could  bring  her  procreative  life  to  an  end  well  before  the  age  of 
twenty-five,  so  that  she  could  then,  unhampered  by  child-bearing  and 
mature  in  experience,  be  free  to  enter  on  such  wider  activities  in  the 
world  as  she  might  be  fitted  for. 

Such  an  arrangement  of  the  procreative  life  of  women  would,  ob- 
viously, only  be  a  variation,  and  would  probably  be  unsuited  for  the 
majority.  Every  case  must  be  judged  on  its  own  merits.  The  best  age 
for  procreation  will  probably  continue  to  be  regarded  as  being,  for  most 
women,  around  the  age  of  twenty.    But  at  a  time  like  the  present,  when 


638  PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SEX. 

there  is  an  unfortunate  tendency  for  motherhood  to  be  unduly  delayed, 
it  becomes  necessary  to  insist  on  the  advantages,  in  many  cases,  of  early 
motherhood. 

There  are  other  conditions  favorable  or  unfavorable  to 
procreation  which  it  is  now  unnecessary  to  discuss  in  detail,  since 
they  have  already  been  incidentally  dealt  with  in  previous  volumes 
of  these  Studies.  There  is,  for  instance,  the  question  of  the  time 
of  year  and  the  time  of  the  menstrual  cycle  which  may  most 
properly  be  selected  for  procreation.1  The  best  period  is  prob- 
ably that  when  sexual  desire  is  strongest,  which  is  the  period 
when  conception  would  appear,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  most  often  to 
occur.  This  would  be  in  spring  or  early  summer,2  and  imme- 
diately after  (or  shortly  before)  the  menstrual  period.  The 
Chinese  have  observed  that  the  last  day  of  menstruation  and  the 
two  following  days — corresponding  to  the  period  of  oestrus — 
constitute  the  most  favorable  time  for  fecundation,  and  Bossi,  of 
Genoa,  has  found  that  the  great  majority  of  successes  in  both 
natural  and  artificial  fecundation  occur  at  this  period.3  Soranus, 
as  well  as  the  Talmud,  assigned  the  period  about  menstruation  as 
the  best  for  impregnation,  and  Susruta,  the  Indian  physician, 
said  that  at  this  time  pregnancy  most  readily  occurs  because  then 
the  mouth  of  the  womb  is  open,  like  the  flower  of  the  water-lily 
to  the  sunshine. 

We  have  now  at  last  reached  the  point  from  which  we  started, 
the  moment  of  conception,  and  the  child  again  lies  in  its  mother's 
womb.  There  remains  no  more  to  be  said.  The  divine  cycle  of 
life  is  completed. 

1  See,  in  vol.  i,  the  study  of  "The  Phenomena  of  Sexual  Periodicity." 

2  Among  animals,  also,  spring  litters  are  often  said  to  be  the  best. 

3  Bossi's  results  are  summarized  in  Archives  cV Anthropologic 
Criminelle,  Sept.,  1891.  Alebrand  of  Florence,  the  French  King's  physi- 
cian in  the  thirteenth  century,  also  advised  intercourse  a  day  after  the 
end  of  menstruation. 


POSTSCRIPT. 


"The  work  that  I  was  born  to  do  is  done,"  a  great  poet 
wrote  when  at  last  he  had  completed  his  task.  And  although 
I  am  not  entitled  to  sing  any  Nunc  dimittis,  I  am  well  aware 
that  the  task  that  has  occupied  the  best  part  of  my  life  can 
have  left  few  years  and  little  strength  for  any  work  that 
comes  after.  It  is  more  than  thirty  years  ago  since  the  first 
resolve  to  write  the  work  now  here  concluded  began  to 
shape  itself,  still  dimly  though  insistently;  the  period  of 
study  and  preparation  occupied  over  fifteen  years,  ending 
with  the  publication  of  Man  and  Woman,  put  forward  as  a 
prolegomenon  to  the  main  work  which,  in  the  writing  and 
publication,  has  occupied  the  fifteen  subsequent  years. 

It  was  perhaps  fortunate  for  my  peace  that  I  failed  at 
the  outset  to  foresee  all  the  perils  that  beset  my  path.  I 
knew  indeed  that  those  who  investigate  severely  and  inti- 
mately any  subject  which  men  are  accustomed  to  pass  by  on 
the  other  side  lay  themselves  open  to  misunderstanding  and 
even  obloquy.  But  I  supposed  that  a  secluded  student  who 
approached  vital  social  problems  with  precaution,  making 
no  direct  appeal  to  the  general  public,  but  only  to  the  public's 
teachers,  and  who  wrapped  up  the  results  of  his  inquiries  in 
technically  written  volumes  open  to  few,  I  supposed  that  such 
a  student  was  at  all  events  secure  from  any  gross  form  of 
attack  on  the  part  of  the  police  or  the  government  under 
whose  protection  he  imagined  that  he  lived.  That  proved 
to  be  a  mistake.  When  only  one  volume  of  these  Studies 
had  been  written  and  published  in  England,  a  prosecution, 

(639) 


640  POSTSCRIPT. 

instigated  by  the  government,  put  an  end  to  the  sale  of  that 
volume  in  England,  and  led  me  to  resolve  that  the  subse- 
quent volumes  should  not  be  published  in  my  own  country. 
I  do  not  complain.  I  am  grateful  for  the  early  and  generous 
sympathy  with  which  my  work  was  received  in  Germany 
and  the  United  States,  and  I  recognize  that  it  has  had  a 
wider  circulation,  both  in  English  and  the  other  chief 
languages  of  the  world,  than  would  have  been  possible  by 
the  modest  method  of  issue  which  the  government  of  my 
own  country  induced  me  to  abandon.  Nor  has  the  effort  to 
crush  my  work  resulted  in  any  change  in  that  work  by  so 
much  as  a  single  word.  With  help,  or  without  it,  I  have 
followed  my  own  path  to  the  end. 

For  it  so  happens  that  I  come  on  both  sides  of  my  house 
from  stocks  of  Englishmen  who,  nearly  three  hundred 
years  ago,  had  encountered  just  these  same  difficulties  and 
dangers  before.  In  the  seventeenth  century,  indeed,  the 
battle  was  around  the  problem  of  religion,  as  to-day  it  is 
around  the  problem  of  sex.  Since  I  have  of  late  years 
realized  this  analogy  I  have  often  thought  of  certain 
admirable  and  obscure  men  who  were  driven  out,  robbed, 
and  persecuted,  some  by  the  Church  because  the  spirit  of 
Puritanism  moved  within  them,  some  by  the  Puritans 
because  they  clung  to  the  ideals  of  the  Church,  yet  both  alike 
quiet  and  unflinching,  both  alike  fighting  for  causes  of 
freedom  or  of  order  in  a  field  which  has  now  for  ever  been 
won.  That  victory  has  often  seemed  of  good  augury  to  the 
perhaps  degenerate  child  of  these  men  who  has  to-day 
sought  to  maintain  the  causes  of  freedom  and  of  order  in 
another  field. 

It  sometimes  seems,  indeed,  a  hopeless  task  to  move 
the  pressure  of  inert  prejudices  which  are  at  no  point  so 


POSTSCRIPT.  641 

obstinate  as  this  of  sex.  It  may  help  to  restore  the  serenity 
of  our  optimism  if  we  would  more  clearly  realize  that  in  a 
very  few  generations  all  these  prejudices  will  have  perished 
and  be  forgotten.  He  who  follows  in  the  steps  of  Nature 
after  a  law  that  was  not  made  by  man,  and  is  above  and 
beyond  man,  has  time  as  well  as  eternity  on  his  side,  and 
can  afford  to  be  both  patient  and  fearless.  Men  die,  but  the 
ideas  they  seek  to  kill  live.  Our  books  may  be  thrown 
to  the  flames,  but  in  the  next  generation  those  flames 
become  human  souls.  The  transformation  is  effected  by  the 
doctor  in  his  consulting  room,  by  the  teacher  in  the  school, 
the  preacher  in  the  pulpit,  the  journalist  in  the  press.  It 
is  a  transformation  that  is  going  on,  slowly  but  surely, 
around  us. 

I  am  well  aware  that  many  will  not  feel  able  to  accept 
the  estimate  of  the  sexual  situation  as  here  set  forth,  more 
especially  in  the  final  volume.  Some  will  consider  that 
estimate  too  conservative,  others  too  revolutionary.  For 
there  are  always  some  who  passionately  seek  to  hold  fast  to 
the  past;  there  are  always  others  who  passionately  seek  to 
snatch  at  what  they  imagine  to  be  the  future.  But  the  wise 
man,  standing  midway  between  both  parties  and  sympathiz- 
ing with  each,  knows  that  we  are  ever  in  the  stage  of  transi- 
tion. The  present  is  in  every  age  merely  the  shifting  point 
at  which  past  and  future  meet,  and  we  can  have  no  quarrel 
with  either.  There  can  be  no  world  without  traditions; 
neither  can  there  be  any  life  without  movement.  As  Hera- 
cleitus  knew  at  the  outset  of  modern  philosophy,  we  cannot 
bathe  twice  in  the  same  stream,  though,  as  we  know  to-day, 
the  stream  still  flows  in  an  unending  circle.  There  is  never 
a  moment  when  the  new  dawn  is  not  breaking  over  the 
earth,  and  never  a  moment  when  the  sunset  ceases  to  die. 


642  POSTSCRIPT. 

It  is  well  to  greet  serenely  even  the  first  glimmer  of  the 
dawn  when  we  see  it,  not  hastening  towards  it  with  undue 
speed,  nor  leaving  the  sunset  without  gratitude  for  the  dying 
light  that  once  was  dawn. 

In  the  moral  world  we  are  ourselves  the  light-bearers, 
and  the  cosmic  process  is  in  us  made  flesh.  For  a  brief  space 
it  is  granted  to  us,  if  we  will,  to  enlighten  the  darkness  that 
surrounds  our  path.  As  in  the  ancient  torch-race,  which 
seemed  to  Lucretius  to  be  the  symbol  of  all  life,  we  press 
forward  torch  in  hand  along  the  course.  Soon  from  behind 
comes  the  runner  who  will  outpace  us.  All  our  skill  lies  in 
giving  into  his  hand  the  living  torch,  bright  and  unflickering, 
as  we  ourselves  disappear  in  the  darkness. 

Havelock  Ellis. 


INDEX   OF  AUTHOBS. 


Abdias,  158. 
Achery,  24,  270. 
Acton,   191,   261,  270. 
Adam,    Mme.,   79,   411,   465. 
Adler,   Felix,  485. 
Adler,   O.,  523,  525,  527,  546. 
Adner,  456. 

Aguilaniedo,    260,   265,   266,   300,   305. 
Alebrand,  633,  638. 
Alexander,  Dr.   H.,   278,  591. 
Alexandre,    Alcide,    30. 
Allee,  A.,  27. 
Allen,    L.    M.,    9. 
Allen,  Mary  W.,  49,  50. 
Ambrose,    St.,    158. 
Amelineau,    43. 
Ammon,  209. 
Amram,  D.  W.,  394. 
Angela   de    Fulginio,    153. 
Angus,   H.    C,   88,   515. 
Anstie,  187,  188,  189. 
Aquinas,  16,   168,  180,  220,   283. 
Ardu,   278. 

Arendt,  Henrietta,  260. 
Aretino,   558. 
Aristotle,   167,  222,  604. 
Aronstam,   625. 
Ascarilla,  278. 
Aschaffenburg,   259,   268. 
Astengo,  9. 
Astor,   Mary,  397. 
Astruc,   322. 
Athanasius,    128. 
Athenasus,   95,  230. 
Audry,   327. 
Augagneur,   191. 

Augustine,   St.,   16,  96,  98,  123,  125,  126, 
132,   167,   16S,   232,   282,  399,   432,   604. 
Aurientis,  347. 
Ayala,   322. 

Bacehimont,  11. 

Bachaumont,  600. 

Badley,  J.  H.,  49,  53. 

Baelz,    108. 

Baer,  K.   M.,   303. 

Baker,   Smith,   459,  521. 

Balestrini,   604,   608,   610. 

Ballantyne,   Dr.,   9,   11,   584,   605. 

Ballantyne,    Miss   H.,   76. 

Balls-Headley,   188. 

Balzac,  281,  525,   539. 

Bangs,   L.    B.,   551. 

Bartels,   Max,   14,   41. 

Basedow,  56. 

Basil,    St.,   167. 

Bateson,   585,   630. 

Baumgarten,    266,    274. 

Bausset,   605,    611. 

Bax,    Belfort,    363,    474. 

Bazan,  Emilia  Pardo,  91. 

Beadnell,   C.    M.,   88. 

Beddoes,  50,  56. 


Bedolliere,  195,   462,   517. 

Bell,  Sanford,  37,  38,  528. 

Benecke,   134,   234. 

Benedikt,    537. 

Bentzon,    Mme.,    519. 

Berault,  G.,  252,  287. 

Berg,   Leo,   89. 

Bernard,    St.,    119. 

Berry,  F.,  73. 

Bertherand,  233. 

Bertillon,   625. 

Besant,  Mrs.,  446. 

Beza,  441,   442. 

Bierhoff,   333. 

Birnbaum,   564. 

Bishop,   G.   P.,   448,   452,   478. 

Bishop,    Mrs.,    108. 

Blacker,  24,   597. 

Blake,  William,  86,  101,  144. 

Blandford,  61,  597. 

Blaschko,  251,  253,  266. 

Bloch,  Iwan,  36,  54,  103,  120,  135,  195, 
241,  243,  280,  289,  291,  301,  303,  310, 
320,  323,  332,  352,  374,  381,  416,  457, 
464,  496,  510,  513,  517,  530,  545,  557, 
562,   569,    600. 

Bluhm,   Agnes,   15. 

Blumreich,   552. 

Boccaccio,    514. 

Bohier,   533. 

Bois,    Jules,    235. 

Boissier,  de  Sauvages,  513. 

Bollinger,  27. 

Bolsche,   107. 

Bonger,  225,  259,  264,  291. 

Bongi,    S.,    245. 

Bonhoeffer,    277. 

Boniface,  St.,  295. 

Bonnifield,    187. 

Bonstetten,   136. 

Booth,    C,   261,   289,   303,   388. 

Booth,  D.   S.,  551. 

Bossi,   638. 

Bouchacourt,  7,  9,  17,  19. 

Bougainville,  149. 

Bourget,    79. 

Bouvier,    590. 

Boyle,    F.,    105. 

Brachet,   186. 

Braun,  Lily,  4,  400. 

Brenier    de   Montmorand,    153. 

Brenot,  H.,  19. 

Breuer,   526. 

Brieux,  357. 

Brinton,   134. 

Brouardel,    601,    602. 

Brougham  Lord,  91. 

Brum,   Dr.  Charlotte,  74. 

Bruns,    Ivo,   308. 

Brynmor-Jones,  380,  392,  461. 

Bucer,    441. 

Budge,   A.   W.,   152. 

Button,  143. 


(643) 


644 


INDEX. 


Bulkley,   D.,  339. 

Biiller,  25. 

Bumm,   329. 

Bunge,  15. 

Burchard,  163,  243,  537. 

Burdach,  559. 

Buret,    321. 

Burnet,    429. 

Burton,  Sir  R.,  381. 

Burton,   Robert,   96,   208,  284,   513. 

Busch,  185,   390,  559. 

Bushee,  593. 

Butler,   G.,  43. 

Butterfield,  208. 

Byers,  30. 

Cabanis,  185. 

Caird,  Mona,  148,  471. 

Callari,   275. 

Calvin,  441,  442. 

Calza,    241. 

Canudo,  223. 

Capitaine,   125,  127. 

Caron,  7. 

Carpenter,  Edward,  46,  79,  116,  172,  314, 

419,   510. 
Casanova,    600. 
Caspari,  464. 
Cataneus,    321. 
Cattell,  J.  McKeen,  210. 
Caufeynon,    163. 
Cazalis,    625. 
Chaignon,  30. 
Chambers,  E.  K.,  98. 
Chambers,   W.    G.,   77. 
Chapman,   G.,   437. 
Chapman,   J.,    501. 
Cheetham,    218. 
Cheng,    Mme.,   14. 
Cheyne,   235. 
Child,   May,   427. 
Chotzen,   M.,  83. 
Chrysostom,    126,    152,   154. 
Cicero,  239. 
Ciuffo,   293. 

Clapperton,  Miss,  379,  487,  565,  585. 
Clappier,  11,  12. 
Clarke     67 
Clement    of    Alexandria,    16,    101,    125, 

127,    509. 
Clement  E.,   461. 
Cleveland,   C,  356. 
Clouston,  84,  426,  562,  628. 
Coates,  W.,  624. 
Codrington,    R.    W.,   227. 
Coghlan,   385. 
Colombey,   247. 
Coltman,    236,    237. 
Commenge,   269,   275. 
Cook,    G.    W.,    70. 
Cook,    Capt.    J.,    149,    226. 
Cooper,   A.,   631. 
Cope,  E.   D.,  425,  472,  501,  511. 
Correa,  Roman,  174. 
Coryat,  241. 

Crackanthorpe,  579,  585. 
Cranmer,   443. 
Crawley,   A.   E.,   123,   145,   221,   371,   393, 

398,   424,  425,  435. 
Crocker  326. 
Curr,  390. 
Cushing,  W.,  331. 
Cyples,    223. 


Daniel,   F.   E.,   614. 

Dareste,   18. 

Dargun,    391. 

Darmesteter,  J.,  236. 

Darricarrere,  609. 

Darwin,  565. 

Daudet,    A.,    45. 

D'Aulnay,    Mme.,  560. 

Daza,    W.,    385. 

Debreyne,   16. 

D'Enjoy,   Paul,   461,   490. 

Dens,   16. 

Deodhar,   Mrs.  Kashibai,  306. 

Descartes,  563. 

Despine,  275. 

Despres,  250,  264,  346,  381. 

Dessoir,  Max,  557. 

Diaz   de    Isla,    323. 

Diday,    625. 

Diderot,   123,  491,  527. 

Digby,   Sir  K.,   164. 

Dill,   151,   373,  397. 

Dluska,  Mme.,  25. 

Dodd,  Catherine,  77. 

Doleris,  603. 

Donaldson,  Principal,  308,  394,  397,  393, 

399. 
Donnay,   136. 

Drysdale,    C.   R.,   345,   595,   596. 
Drysdale,   G.,   595. 

Duclaux,   310,    334,    340,   341,   346,   628. 
Diihren,   see  Bloch,   Iwan. 
Dufour,   P.,  239,   240,  294. 
Dukes,    627. 
Dulaure,   99,   232. 
Dulberg,   331. 
Dumas,   G.,  564. 

Duncan,  Matthews,  187,  577,  636. 
Dunnett,    69. 
Dunning,  329. 
Dupouey,  234. 
Durkheim,  424,  435. 
Durlacher,   605. 
Dyer,  I.,  249,  348,  353. 

Edgar,   J.    Clifton,   72. 

Egbert,   S.,   353. 

Ehrenfels,    C.    von,   502,    619. 

Elliot,    G.   F.    S.,   97. 

Ellis,   Sir  A.   B.,  147,   148,   229. 

Ellis,   Havelock,  4,    68,   73,    74,    85,    122, 

170,   214,    415,   528,    529,    585,   591,   593, 

628,   634. 
Ellis,  William,  149. 
Elmy,    Ben.,    see    Ethelmer,    Ellis. 
Enderlin,   Max,  49,  91,   92,   107. 
Engelmann,   65,    68,    76. 
Ennius,    96. 
Enzensberger,  145. 
Erb,  193,  330,  339,  535. 
Erhard,  F.,  166,  287. 
Escherich,  25. 
Esmein,  429,   433,   438,  442. 
Espy  de  Metz,  358. 
Ethelmer,   Ellis,   53,  521. 
Eulenburg,  107,  191,  525,  546. 
Evans,   Mrs.   Grainger,   69. 

Farnell,   165,  230,  231. 
Farrer,  R.  T.,  307. 
Federow.   259. 
Ferdy,  H.,  590,  599,  600. 
Fere,   19,   191,   208,   268. 


INDEX. 


645 


Ferrand,    164. 

Ferrero,   G.,    267,    280,   414. 

Ferriani,  258,  290. 

Fiaschi,  233. 

Fiaux,    266. 

Fielding,    412,    427. 

Finger,   334. 

Fischer,  W.,  268. 

Fitchett,  407. 

Flesch,    Max,    205,   352,   609. 

Flogel,    218. 

Flood,  615. 

Forberg,  558. 

Forel,   106,    131,    141,   363,   419,   519,   524, 

534,  565,  599. 
Fornasari,   277. 
Forquet,    322. 
Fothergill,  J.  M.,  63. 
Fournier,    322,    327,   339,    625. 
Fox,   G.,   446. 
Fracastorus,    321,    335. 
Fraser,    Mrs.,    135. 
Frazer,  J.  G.,  68,  145,  231,  233,  392. 
Freeman,   440. 
French,  H.   C,  327. 
Freud,    36,    42,    79,    166,    185,    189,    199, 

524,  526,  555. 
Friedjung,  27. 
Friedlander,   397. 
Fuchs,  N.,  404. 
Funk,   W.,   356. 
Fiirbringer,    19,    35,    191,    526,    527,    534, 

552,  555,   559,  599,  634. 
Fiirth,  Henriette,  52. 

Gache,  635. 

Gaedeken,  382. 

Gallard,   510. 

Galton,  Sir  F.,  580,  582,  583,  618,  626. 

Gardiner,  J.  S.,  235. 

Garrison,    C.    G.,    475,   478,    481. 

Gaultier,  J.  de,  171,  371. 

Gautier,   L.,   401,   432. 

Geary,    N.,    80,    348,    440,    477. 

Gennep,  A.  Van,  235. 

Gerard,   633. 

Gerhard,  Adele,  70. 

Gerhard,  W.,  106. 

Gerson,    A.,    216,    288,   413,    494. 

Gesell,  563. 

Gibb,  W.   T.,  276,  337. 

Gibbon,  150. 

Giles,  A.   E.,  72,   187. 

Giles,    H.    A.,   14. 

Gillard,  E.,  566. 

Gillen,   87,   221,   392,  424,  533,   576. 

Gilles   de   la  Tourette,   191. 

Ginnell,   461. 

Giuffrida-Ruggeri,  278. 

Gliick,  L.,  321. 

Godard,   37. 

Godfrey,   J.   A.,   185,   211,   314,   423,   425, 

426,   447. 
Godwin,   W.,   483. 
Goethe,    472. 
Gomperz,  612. 
Goncourt,  65,  290,  309,  356. 
Goodchild,  F.  M.,  44,  263,  266. 
Goring,  591. 
Gottheil,   251. 
Gottschling,  88. 

Gourmont,  Remy  de,  136,  540,  555. 
Graef,   R.   de,   120. 


Graf,   A.,    244. 

Grandin,   331,  353. 

Green,   C.   M.,   525. 

Gregory  the  Great,  16,  180. 

Gregory  of  Nazianzen,  220. 

Gregory  of  Nyssa,  126. 

Gregory   of   Tours,    159,   399. 

Gregory   M.,   492. 

Griesinger,  186. 

Gross,    36,    572. 

Gross,  H.,  608. 

Grosse,   409. 

Gulick,  L.  H.,  74. 

Gurlitt,  L.,  54,  224. 

Gury,    414. 

Guttceit,    535,    537,   541,    637. 

Guyau,  85. 

Guyot,   225,   534,  539,   545. 

Gyurkovechky,    182,    202. 

Haddon,  A.  C,  87,  101. 

Hagelstange,  219,  431. 

Hale,  409. 

Hall,  A.,  603. 

Hall,  Stanley,   40,  60,  67,  82,  109. 

Hall,   W.,  5,  6. 

Haller,  534. 

Hamilton,  A.,  238. 

Hammer,    185,    269,    272,   273. 

Hammond,   W.   A.,   37,   534,  535,  612. 

Hamon*  A.,  603. 

Hard,  Hedwig,  274,  296. 

Hardy,  Thomas,  529. 

Harris,   A.,   10. 

Harrison,  F.,  94. 

Hartland,  E.   S.,  231. 

Harwood,    W.    L.,   331. 

Haskovec,    625. 

Haslam,   J.,   409,  588. 

Hausmeister,   P.,   251. 

Havelburg,    320. 

Hawkesworth,  227. 

Haycraft,   581,   584. 

Hayes,    P.   J.,    439. 

Haynes,  E.   S.   P.,  434. 

Hegar,  191. 

Heidenhain,  A.,  83. 

Heidingsfeld,    251. 

Heimann,  545. 

Hellmann,  77,  122,  300. 

Hellpach,   168,   190,   306. 

Helme,    T.   A.,   11,   16. 

Helvetius,  139. 

Herbert,   Auberon,  470. 

Herman,    G.,   41. 

Hermont,  A.,  300. 

Herodotus,   108,   229,    232,    233,   391,   408, 

409. 
Heron,  591. 
Hesiod,   558,   633. 
Hiller,  609. 
Hinton,   111,  112,  116,  132,  144,  165,   169, 

181,   ISO,   315,   364,   445,   492,  501,   539, 

570. 
Hirsch,   Max,   611. 
Hirschfeld,  Magnus,  80,  270,  273,  456. 
Hirth,    G.,    312,    496,    521,    522,    551,    569. 
Hobhouse,  L.  T.,  370,  394,  396,  401,  405, 

408,  409,  410,  431,  460,  470,  480. 
Hobson,    J.    A.,    410. 
Hoffmann,  E.,  324. 
Holbach,   115,  425. 
Holder,  A.  B„  323. 


646 


INDEX. 


Holmes,  T.(  378. 

Holt,   R.  B.,  235,  498. 

Hopkins,  Bllice,  53,  289. 

Hort,  155. 

Houzel,  72. 

Howard,   G.    E.,  424,   429,    432,   436,   440, 

441,  446,  448,   451,   464,    471,   477,   506, 

528. 
Howitt,  A.  W.,  424. 
Hudrey-Menos,   J.,   58. 
Hughes,    C.   H.,    584. 
Humboldt,  W.  Von,  222,  444,  463. 
Hutchinson,  Sir  J.,  535. 
Hutchinson,   Woods,    130,   140,   258,    276, 

286,    289,   299,    410,    422,    468. 
Hyde,    J.    N.,    104. 
Hyrtl,  600. 

Inderwick,   463. 
Ivens,  F.,  331. 

Jacobi,  Mary  P.,  66. 

Jacobsohn,  L.,  192. 

Janet,    146,    198. 

Janke,  270. 

Jastrow,    M.,    229. 

Jeannel,  265,  292,  295. 

Jellinek,   C,   608. 

Jentsch,   K.,   196. 

Jerome,   H.,   101,  151,   152,   155,  207. 

John  of  Salisbury,  98. 

Jones,  Sir  W.,  129. 

Jullien,   625. 

Kaan,   50. 

Kalbeck,   110. 

Karin,   Karina,   59. 

Keller,   G.,  36. 

Kelly,    H.    A.,    512. 

Kennedy,  Helen,  65,  69. 

Key,  Ellen,  31,  32,  92,  115,  175,  176,  316, 
364,  376,  379,  382,  417,  419,  438,  466, 
477,  487,  488,  501,  512,  524,  540,  541, 
562,  564,   574,   580,   587,   610,  625,   628. 

Keyes,  E.  L.,  55,  59. 

Kiernan,  278,  474. 

Kind,   A.,   44,   54. 

Kingsley,   C,   469. 

Kirk,  E.   B.,  54. 

Kisch,  188,  329,  526,  529,  535,  551,  552, 
555,  573,  577,  599,  616,  632,  634,  636, 
637. 

Klotz,  556. 

Knott,   J.,   322. 

Kossmann,   534. 

Kowalewsky,   Sophie,  141. 

Krafft-Ebing,   182,   194,  326,   416,  599. 

Krauss,    F.    S.,    163,    227,   231. 

Krukenberg,  Frau,  49. 

Kubary,   550. 

Kullberg,  261. 

Kurella,  273. 

Lacroix,  P.,  229. 
Lafargue,  Paul,  165. 
La  Jeunesse,  E.,  299. 
Lallemand,  182. 
Lambkin,   325,   327,  406. 
Lancaster,  60. 
Landor,  173. 
Landret,   335. 
Langsdorf,    89. 
Lapie,  419. 


Laplace,  141. 

Lasco,  John  9,,  509. 

Lauvergne,  186. 

Laycock,  562. 

Lea,    153,    162,    180,    283,    419,    496,    623. 

Lecky,    281,   307,   370,   374,   398,   460,   495. 

Lederer,  186,  202. 

Ledermann,  622. 

Lee,   Sidney,  514. 

Lefebvre,  A.,  572. 

Legg,  J.  W.,  432,  509. 

Lemonnier,    C,   46,    134. 

Lenkei,   104. 

Lepage,  634. 

Letourneux,    8. 

Levy-Brutl,  371. 

Lewis,  Denslow,  47,  353. 

Lewitt,  204. 

Leyboff,    10. 

Lilienthal,   608. 

Lindsey,   B.   B.,  63. 

Lippert,   266,   291. 

Lischnewska,  Maria,  54,  57,  106. 

Liszt,  608. 

Livingstone,   W.   P.,  389. 

Lock,   W.    H.,   630. 

Logan,    257. 

Lombroso,  267,  275,  280,  414. 

Lowenfeld,   185,   194,  535,  598. 

Lowndes,   320. 

Lucas,   Clement,   337. 

Lucretius,  556. 

Lumholtz,    543. 

Luther,    181,   441,   499,    532,   578. 

Lydston,    612. 

Lyttelton,   E.,   46,   49,  59,   311. 

Maberly,  G.   C.,  480. 

MacMurchy,    Dr.    Helen,   69. 

Macvie,   605. 

Madam,  M.,  500. 

Maeterlinck,   115. 

Magruder,  J.,    427. 

Maillard-Brune,  13. 

Maine,  395. 

Maitland,    40,    424,   440. 

Malthus,   138,    594. 

Mandeville,  B-,  249,  285,  364. 

Mannhardt,  231. 

Mantegazza,  A.,  266,  293. 

Mantegazza,  P.,  534,  543. 

Margais,   394. 

Marchesini,  62. 

Marcuse,    J.,    107. 

Marcuse,    M.,   202,   271. 

Margueritte,  P.,  250,  334,  465,  473. 

Margueritte,  V.,  250,   334,  357,   465,   473. 

Marholm,   L.,  594. 

Marro,   50,  58,  290,  293,   363,  592,  635. 

Martindale,    Miss,   22. 

Martineau,  292. 

Marx,  V.,  393. 

Massalongo,  599. 

Masson,  444. 

Mathews,  A.,  368. 

Mathews,  R.  H.,  87. 

Matignon,    237,   287. 

Maudsley,    140. 

Maurice,    General,   623. 

Mayor,   155. 

Mayreder,    Rosa,    176,    404,   417,   574. 

McBride,  G.  H.,  72. 

McCleary,   G.    F.,   9,   10. 


INDEX. 


647 


Mcllquham,  397. 

Melancthon,  442. 

Menger,    A.    von,    27,   350.    585. 

Menjago,  17L 

Mensinga,  596. 

Meredith,   G.,  472. 

Merimee,  166,  572. 

Merrick,   257,  266,   268,  288,   289,   294. 

Metchnikoff,   46,   90,   324,   360,   584. 

Meyer-Benfey,   H.,   514. 

Meyer,   Bruno,  377,  529. 

Meyer,  E.  H.,  382. 

Meyrick,  399,  499. 

Michelet,  558. 

Michels,  R.,  306,  547. 

Migne,   152. 

Mill,  J.,  594. 

Mill,  J.  S.,  397. 

Millais,  J.  G.,  422. 

Miller,  Noyes,  553,  629. 

Miln,  L.  J.,  498. 

Milner,   636. 

Milton,  443. 

Mobius,  90. 

Molinari,   G.   de,  263,  286. 

Moll,  34,  35,  37,  38,  45,  48,  49,  53,  60,  62, 

84,   176,  195,  202,   204,   564,  599. 
Monkemoller,  268. 
Montaigne,   509,   513,  527. 
Montesquieu,  464. 
Montmorency,  448. 
Mookerji,  330. 
Moore,  Samson,  29. 
Morasso,    268,    274. 
More,   Sir  T.,   102,   354. 
Moreau,  Christophe,  252. 
Morley,   Lord,   281,   464,   620. 
Morley,    Margaret,   53. 
Morris,  William,  144. 
Morrow,  345. 
Mortimer,   G.,   387. 
Moryson,   Fynes,  105. 
Mott,  F.  W.,  324,  325,  326. 
Multatuli,  50. 
Miinsterberg,    459,   486. 
Murray,   Gilbert,  222. 
Mylott,   525. 

Nacke,    41,    84,    191,    194,    287,    326,    538, 

614,  615. 
Naumann,  F.,  4. 
Nefzaoui,   513. 
Neisser,  287,  324,  329,  352. 
Neugebauer,  525. 
Newman,    G.,   6,   10,   11,  15,  603. 
Newsholme,  A.,  590. 
Niessen,  Max  von,  361. 
Nietzold,  394,  487. 
Nietzsche,  87,  99,  132,  140,  170,  219,  220, 

317,  368. 
Niven,  11. 
Noble,   M.,  545. 
Noggerath,  330. 
Northcote,  Rev.  H.,  16,  49,  93,  123,  181, 

196,  385,  509. 
Notthaft,  321. 
Noyes,   J.   H.,   553,   617. 
Nystrom,  183,  185,  202,  599. 

Obersteiner,   326. 
Obici,  62. 

Odo  of   Cluny,   119. 
Oefele,  328. 


Okamura,  322. 
Olberg,  Oda,  607. 
Omer,   Haleby,  513. 
Ostwald,  H.,  271. 
Ott,  597. 

Ovid,  513,  546,   556. 
Owen,  R.  D.,  595. 

Paget,   Sir  J.,  191,  510,  609. 
Palladius,  152. 
Pappritz,  Anna,  610. 
Parent-Duchatelet,    256,    259,    261,    265, 

294,  307. 
Pare,  561. 

Parsons,  B.   C,  378. 
Parsons,    J.,   551. 
Patmore,  C,  45. 
Paton,   Noel,   16. 
Paul,  Dr.  H.,  166. 
Paulucci  de  Calboli,  303. 
Paulus,   475. 

Pearson,    K.,   222,   583,   585,   618. 
Pechin,  7. 

Pepys,   98,    129,   297,  414,   495,   566. 
Pernet,    320. 
Perruc,  11. 
Perry-Coste,   532. 
Petermann,  J.,  556. 
Petrie,  Flinders,  230,  394. 
Picard,    635. 
Pike,   403. 

Pinard,   7,   8,   9,   19,   578,  582,  606. 
Pinkus,  632. 
Pinloche,  56. 
Place,    Francis,   595. 
Plato,   95,   230,   604. 
Plarr,    V.,   600. 
Plautus,    396. 
Playfair,  Sir  W.  S.,  64. 
Ploss,  14,  16,  68,  516,  560. 
Plutarch,   108,   220,  510. 
Pole,  M.   T.,  53. 
Pollack,  Flora,  337. 
Pollock,    Sir   F.,    401,    424,    440. 
Potter,   M.   A.,   380,  381,  543. 
Potton,   262. 

Power,  D'Arcy,  324.  k 

Powys,    386. 
Pret,   138. 
Price,  J.,  341. 
Prevost,   M.,   79. 
Prinzing,   632. 
Probst-Biraben,  146. 
Proksch,  601. 
Pudor,  99,  105,  112. 
Punnett,  630. 
Pyke,  Rafford,  485,  531,  538. 

Querlon,  Meusnier  de,  285. 
Quir6s,    C.   Bernaldo   de,   260,   265,    266, 
300,   305. 

Rabelais,  482. 

Rabutaux,    224,   240,  242,   284. 

Raciborski,  269,   596. 

Radbruch,  608. 

Ramdohr,  37. 

Ramsay,  Sir  W.  M.,  156,  165,  234. 

Rasmussen,  405,  561,  564. 

Ratramnus,  124. 

Redlich,  195. 

Reed,   C,  554. 

Regnier,  H.  de,  301. 


648 


INDEX. 


Reibmayr,  77,  174,   293,  580,   619. 

Reinhard,   329. 

Remo,    F.,  252,  266. 

Remondino,   183.     , 

Renan,  141,  156,  160. 

Renooz  Celine,  110. 

Renouf,   C,   35. 

Renouvier,  138. 

Restif  de  la   Bretonne,  349,   517,  634. 

Reuss,   225,  263,   292,  295. 

Reuther,  F.,  83. 

Revillout,   393. 

Rhys,  Sir  J.,  380,  392,  461. 

Ribbing,    191,    535. 

Ribot,  565. 

Rich,   H.,  35. 

Richard,   C,   286. 

Richard,   E.,  225,  253. 

Richmond,   Mrs.  Ennis,  50,   53,   59. 

Ritter,    Dr.    Mary,   69. 

Robert,  U.,  242. 

Robertson,  W.,  636. 

Robinovitch,  L.,  584. 

Rogers,   Anna,  485. 

Rohde,    513. 

Rohleder,   184,  196,  203. 

Rolfincius,  122. 

Rosenberg,  625. 

Rosenthal,  422. 

Rousseau,   101. 

Routh,   186. 

Rudeck,   242,  384. 

Ruflnus  Tyrannius,  127. 

Ruggles,   W.,  330. 

Ruling,   Anna,  273. 

Ruskin,  92. 

Russell,  Mrs.  Bertrand,  30. 

Rust,  H.,  88. 

Rutgers,  561. 

Ryan,    M.,   378,   598. 

Ryckere,   E.   de,   265. 

Sabine,   J.   K.,   69. 
Sacher-Masoch,  Wanda  von,  469. 
Sainte-Beuve,   247. 
Saleeby,   585. 
Salimbene,  163. 
Salvat,  22,  83. 
Sanborn,  Lura,   72,  73. 
Sanchez,   T.,   180. 
Sandoz,  F.,  104. 
Sanger,   257,   266,   289,   294. 
Sarrante-Lourie,   Mme.,  10. 
Schafenacker,  91. 
Schaudinn,    324. 
Schlegel,  F.,  101,  514. 
Schmid,  Marie  von,  32. 
Schmidt,  R.,  129,  545. 
Schneider,   C.   K.,  262. 
Schopenhauer,  137,  281,  320,  492. 
Schrader,  O.,  383,  403. 
Schrank,  241,  295. 
Schreiber,   Adele,  200,   427. 
Schreiner,  Olive,  408. 
Schrempf,  570. 
Schrenck-Notzing,   182,   599. 
Schroeder,   E.   A.,   27,   370. 
Schroeder,  T.,  54,  224,  498. 
Schultz,   Alwyn,   98,    163,   537. 
Schultze-Malkowsky,   E.,   36. 
Schurig,  182,   533,   535,  634. 
Schurtz,   H.,   227,  228,  309. 
Schwalbe,  632. 


Scott,   Colin,   170. 

Scott,  J.  F.,  184,  131,  602. 

Segur,  397. 

Seligmann,    68. 

Sellman,  W.  A.  B.,  74. 

Senancour,    80,    98,    102,    164,    167,    376, 

415,    495,   500,   547. 
Seneca,  220. 
Seropian,   9,   19. 
Sevigne,    Mme.    de,    600. 
Seymour,  H.   J.,  620. 
Shakespeare,  564. 
Shaw,  G.   B.,  358. 
Shebbeare,   Rev.   C.  J.,  526. 
Shelley,   144. 

Sherwell,  259,   265,  289,  294. 
Shufeldt,   93,   97,   114,   422,   465,   471,  483. 
Sidgwick,  H.,  170,   225,   366,  367. 
Sidis,   Boris,  78. 
Sieroshevski,   147. 
Simmel,    299. 
Simon,   Helene,    70. 
Sinclair,    Sir  W.,  11. 
Smith,   Robertson,  228,  392. 
Soalhat,  633. 

Somerset,   Lady  Henry,   587. 
Sommer,   R.,   58,   108. 
Soranus,   18,  638. 

Spencer,  Baldwin,  87,  221,  392,  424,  576. 
Spencer,  Herbert,  135,  317. 
Spitta,    635. 

Stanmore,  Lord,  100,  406. 
Stefanowski,  564. 
Stefansson,    461. 
Stevenson,  R.  L.,  406. 
Stevenson,  T.  H.  C,  590. 
Stocker,  Helene,  200,  375,  405,  419,  573, 

587,  598. 
Strampff,   441. 

Stratz,    C.    H.,    93,    103,    109. 
Streitberg,    Grafin,    607. 
Strohmberg,    259,    268. 
Sturge,   Miss,  70. 
Suidas,   557. 
Sullivan,   W.    C,   15. 
Sumner,  W.   G.,   229,  370,   400,   605. 
Susruta,  532,  638. 
Sutherland,   J.  F.,  634. 
Sutherland,   W.    D.,    16,   552. 
Sykes,  J.   F.  J.,  5,  30. 

Tait,  W.,  270,  292,  294. 

Talbot,  E.  S.,  278. 

Tammeo,    275. 

Tarde,  120,  131,  141,  310,  376,  426,  574. 

Tarnowski,   Pauline,  277. 

Taylor,  R.  W.,  312,  525,  552. 

Tenney,    330. 

Tennyson,   427. 

Terman,  L.  M.,  35. 

Tertullian,   96,   127. 

Theresa,  W.,  169. 

Thomas,  A.   W.,   589. 

Thomas,   N.   W.,   424. 

Thomas,   Prof.   W.,  140,   495,  572. 

Thomson,   J.   A.,   585. 

Thoreau,    103,    143. 

Thuasne,    163,    243. 

Tilt,   65,   187. 

Tobler,  68. 

Todhunter,  144. 

Tolstoy,  564. 

Tout,  C.  Hill,  145. 


INDEX. 


649 


Traill,    498. 
Tredgold,  597,  616. 
Trewby,  54. 

Troll-Borostyani   I.   von,   260. 
Trollope,  A.,  299. 
Turnbull,  150. 

Ulpian,  224,  396. 

Ungewitter,  105,  107,  112,  114,  115. 

Unna,  324. 

Urquhart,   627. 

Vacher  de  Lapouge,  581. 

Valentino,   545. 

Valera,  524. 

Vanderkiste,  291. 

Varendonck,    77. 

Vatsyayana,  539,  544. 

Vaux,   Rev.   J.   B.,  403. 

Velden,  Van  den,  591. 

Velten,  134. 

Venette,  558. 

Veniero,  558. 

Vickery,  A.  Drysdale,  596. 

Vinay,  597. 

Vinci,  L.   de,  118. 

Vines,    Miss,   23. 

Virchow,   322. 

Vitrey,  27. 

Voltaire,  247. 

Vries,  de,  1. 

Wachter,   429. 
Wagner,  C,  222. 
Wahrmund,  419,  491. 
Wales,  E.   B.,  636. 
Walter,  J.   von,   161. 
Ward,  Lester,  483. 


Wardlaw,  R.,  225. 

Warker,    Van   de,    554. 

Warren,   M.  A.,  54. 

Wasserschleben,  162. 

Watkins,  75. 

Webb,   Sidney,  589,  629. 

Weinberg,  608. 

Weininger,  309. 

Welander,   266. 

Welch,  F.  H.,  252. 

Wells,    H.    G.,    172,   588. 

Werthauer,    45,    110. 

Wessmann,    88. 

Westermarck,  123,  145,  146,  148,  179,  221, 
228,  232,  369,  370,  390,  391,  399,  409, 
423,  431,   450,   464,   492,  575. 

Wharton,  225. 

Wheeler,  C.  B.,  444. 

Wheeler,    Mrs.,    397. 

Whitaker,    Nellie   C,   71. 

Whitman,   Walt,   560. 

Wiedow,    25. 

Wilcox,    Ella  W.,    190. 

Wilhelm,    606. 

William  of  Malmsbury,   153. 

Williams,  Dawson,  10. 

Williams,  Hugh,  162. 

Williams,  W.  Roger,  35. 

Windle,  C.  A.,  627. 

Wollstonecraft,  M.,  541,  563. 

Yule,   G.   Adney,  590. 

Zacchia,  477,  544,  550,  554. 
Zache,   516,   547. 
Zanzinger,    E.,    604,    607. 
Zeno,   604. 

Zoroaster,    532,    559. 
Zuccarelli,  615,   616. 


INDEX  OF  SUBJECTS. 


Abortion,  arguments  against,   611 
et  seq. 
modern  advocates  of,  606  et  seq. 
the  practice  of,  601. 
Abstinence,  alleged  evil  results  of, 
182  et  seq. 
alleged     good     results     of,     191 

et  seq. 
as  a  preparation  for  marriage, 

524. 
criticism   of   conception   of,    196 

et  seq. 
intermediate  views  of,  194  et  seq. 
moral  results  of,  212. 
sexual,  in   relation  to  chastity, 

169.    177. 
the  problems  of,  178  et  seq. 
Abyssinia,  prostitution  in,  233. 

sexual  initiation  in,  516. 
Achilleus   and   Nereus,    legend   of, 

158. 
Adultery,  450  et  seq. 
Africa,  chastity  on  West  Coast  of, 

147. 
Alcohol,    as    a    sexual    stimulant, 
207. 
in  pregnancy,  14. 
in  relation  to  the  orgy,  220. 
Alexander  VI  and  courtesans,  243. 
Ambil  anak  Marriage,  391. 
America,   divorce   in,   458   et  seq., 
624. 
marriage  in,  446,  478,  485. 
prostitution  in,  251,  257,  266. 
American   Indians,    appreciate   as- 
ceticism,   145. 
sexual  initiation  among,  88. 
their  Sabbath  orgies,  221. 
words  for  love  among,   134. 
Aphrodite  Pandemos,  230. 
Art  in  relation  to  sexual  impulse, 

90,  223. 
Asceticism     among     early     Chris- 
tians, 151  et  seq. 
appreciated  by  savages,  145. 
definition  of,   175. 
in  religion,  146. 
later  degeneracy  of,  102. 
value  of,  143  et  seq. 
Ascetics,   attitude   towards   sex  of 

mediaeval,  119. 
Aspasia,  308. 

r65c» 


Athletics  for  women,  75. 
Aucassin  et  Nicolette,  161. 
Australia,  marriage  system  in,  424. 
saturnalian  festivals  in,  221. 
sexual  initiation  in,   87. 
Auvergne,  story  of  the  Two  Lovers 

of,  159. 
Azimba  Land,  sexual  initiation  in, 
88,  515. 

Babies,   children's   theories  on   the 

origin  of,  40  et  sQq. 
Babylonia,   high   status   of  women 
in,  393. 
religious  prostitution  in,  229. 
Bawenda,  sexual  initiation  among, 

88. 
Beena  marriage,  391. 
Beethoven,   184. 
Behn,  Aphra,  308. 
Belgium,   prostitution  in,   257. 
Bestial,  human  sexual  impulse  not, 

130. 
Bible  in  relation  to  sexual  educa- 
tion, 90. 
Biometrics,  583,  630. 
Birth,    civilized    tendency   to    pre- 
mature, 9. 
Birthrate,  decline  of,  589  et  seq. 
Blindness    in    relation    to    gonor- 
rhoea, 329. 
Botany  in  sexual  education,  58. 
Bredalbane  case,  477. 
Breed  versus  nurture,  34. 
Bride-price,  432. 
Brothel,  decay  of,  302,  332. 
in   ancient  Borne,   239. 
in  the  East,  236. 
mediseval,   242. 
modern  defence  of,  287. 
modern  regulation  of,  249. 
origin  of,  234. 
Bundling,  380. 
Burmah,  prostitution  in,  235. 

Canon  law,  defects  of,  438. 
its   importance,   433. 
origin  of,  436. 
persistence  of  its  traditions,  449 

et  seq. 
sound  kernel  of,  479. 


INDEX. 


651 


Carlyle,   174. 
Carnival,  origin  of,  218. 
Castration,    modern    developments 
of,   614. 
the  practice  of,  612. 
Chastity  among  early   Christians, 
151  et  seq. 
definition  of,  175. 
girdle  of,  163. 
in  modern  Fiji,  406. 
in  what  sense  a  virtue,  169. 
modern  attitude  towards,  167. 
Protestant  attitude  towards,  164. 
romantic  literature  of,  158. 
the  function  of,  143  et  seq. 
Child,  as  foundation  of  marriage, 
488,  505. 
characteristics    of    eldest    born, 

591. 
its  need  of  two  parents,  487. 
Childhood,   sexual   activity   in,   35 
et  seq.,   209. 
sexual  teaching  in,  48. 
China,  divorce  in,  461. 
prostitution  in,  236. 
Chivalry  on  position  of  women,  in- 
fluence of,  401. 
Christianity,     attitude    towards 
chastity,  151  et  seq. 
attitude  towards  lust,  179. 
attitude  towards  nakedness,  96. 
failed  to  recognize  importance  of 

art  of  love,  517. 
its     influence     on     position     of 
women,  398  et  seq. 
on  marriage,  429  et  seq. 
mixed    attitude    towards    sexual 

impulse,  124  et  seq.,  513. 
towards  prostitution.  282  et  se>q. 
towards  seduction,  180, 
Civilization  and  prostitution,   187 
et  seq. 
and  the  sexual  impulse,  199. 
Coitus,  a  posteriori,  556. 
best  time  for,  558. 
during  pregnancy,  16  et  seq. 
ethnic  variations  in,  557. 
excess  in.  535. 

injuries  due  to  unskilful,  525. 
interruptits,  551. 
morbid  horror  of,  81. 
needs  to   be   taught,   510. 
prayer  before,  559. 
proper  frequency  of,  533. 


Coitus,     religious    significance    of, 
230,  559. 

reservatus,  552. 
Collusion,  doctrine  of,  451. 
Conception,  conditions  of,  577. 

prevention  of,  588  et  seq. 
Concubine,  498. 
Condom,  599. 

Conjugal  rights  or  rites,  538. 
Consent,  age  of,  528. 
Consultation  de  Nourrisson,  29. 
Contract,  marriage  as  a,  470  et  seq. 
Corinth,  prostitution  at,  229,  232. 
Country  life  and  sexuality,  38. 
Courtesan,  origin  of  term,  243. 
Courtship,  the  art  of,  538,  et  seq. 
Criminality  in  relation  to  prostitu- 
tion, 267. 
Cyprus,  prostitution  at,  233. 

Dancing,  hygienic  value  of,  74. 

as  an  orgy,  222. 
D'Aragona,  Tullia,  244. 
Divorce,    by   mutual   consent,    463 
et  seq. 

causes  for,  448. 

in  ancient  Rome,  429. 

in  ancient  Wales,  461. 

in  China,  461. 

in  England,  447. 

in  France,  455,  465. 

in  Germany,  455. 

in  Japan,  460. 

in  Russia,  457. 

in  Switzerland,  457. 

in    United    States,    458    et   seq., 
624. 

Milton's  views  on,  444. 

modern  tendency  of,  462  et  seq. 

Protestant  attitude  towards,  441. 

question  of  damages  for,  450. 

reform  of,  454. 

tendency  of  legislation  regarding, 
624. 

transmission     of    venereal     dis- 
ease as  a  cause  for,  349. 
Drama,    modern    function    of    the, 

222. 
Dysmenorrhea,  187. 

Economic  factor,  of  marriage,  375. 

of  prostitution,  259  et  seq. 
Education    in   matters   of   sexj   33 
et  seq. 

for  women,  75. 


652 


IXDEX. 


Egypt,  high  status  of  women   in, 

393,  408. 
Eldest   born   child,    characteristics 

of,  591. 
England,  marriage  in,  431,  444. 
prostitution    in,    252,    257,    265, 
307. 
Erotic  element  in  marriage,  508. 
Eskimo,  divorce  among,  461. 

sexual  initiation  among,  89. 
Eugenics,   7. 

false   ideas  of,  583. 
foundation  by  Galton,  582. 
importance  of  environment  in  re- 
lation to,  623. 
in  relation  to  castration,  614. 
Noyes   a  pioneer   in,   618. 
positive,  621. 

wide  acceptance  of  principle  of, 
584. 
Excretory   centers   as  affecting  es- 
timate of  sexual  impulse,  120 
et  seq. 
Exogamy,  origin  of,  423. 

Families     and    degeneracy,     large, 

591. 
Father  in  relation  to  family,  2. 
Fecundation,  artificial,   632. 
Festivals,  seasonal,  219,  230. 
Fidus,  115. 
Fiji,  chastity  in,  406. 
Flirtation,  518. 
Fools,  Feast  of,  219. 
Fornication,     theological     doctrine 

of,  283,  375. 
France,  divorce  in,  455,  465. 

prostitution    in,    240,    250,    253, 

256,  265,   306. 
Franco,  Veronica,  245. 

Gallantry,   the   ancient   conception 

of,   412. 
Geisha,  the,  307. 

General  paralysis  and  syphilis,  325. 
Genius,  in  relation  to  chastity,  173, 
184. 

in  relation  to  love,  574. 
Germany,  divorce  in,  455. 

marriage  in,  431. 

prostitution  in,  251,  253,  333. 
Gestation,  length  of,  9. 
Girdle  of  chastity,  163. 
Girls,  interest  in  sex  matters,  62. 

masculine  ideals  of,  77. 


Girls,  sex  education  of,  83. 

their  need  of  sexual  knowledge, 
46. 
Gnostic    elements    in   early    Chris- 
tian literature,   156. 
Goddesses  in  forefront  of  primitive 

pantheons,   392. 
Gonorrhoea,  nature  and  results  of, 
328  et  seq. 

And  see  Venereal  Diseases. 
Goutte  de  Lait,  29. 
Greeks,  origin  of  their  drama,  222. 
prudery  among,  101. 
rarity  of  ideal  sexual  love  among, 

134. 
their    attitude    towards    naked- 
ness, 95. 
their  conception  of  the  orgy,  220. 
their  erotic  writings,  557. 
Group-marriage,  423. 
Gynfficocracy,     alleged     primitive, 
390. 

Hetaira;,  234,  308. 

Hindu  attitude  towards  sex,   129, 

544. 
Holland,  prostitution  in,  250. 
Homosexuality  among  prostitutes, 

272. 
Huddersfield  scheme,  28. 
Hysteria,   183. 

Ideals  of  girls,  masculine,  77. 
Illegitimacy,  292. 

in  Germany,  382,  489. 
Imperia,  244. 
Impotency  in  popular  estimation, 

174. 
Impurity,     disastrous     results     of 
teaching  feminine,  78. 
early  Christian  views  of,  128. 
India,   story  of  The  Betrothed  of, 
156. 
sacred  prostitution  in,  235. 
Individualism  and  Socialism,  24. 
Infantile  mortality,  5. 

in     relation     to     suckling    by 

mother,   26. 
in  relation  to  syphilis,  537. 
Infantile  sexuality,  36. 
Insanity  and  prostitution,  275. 
Intellectual    work    in    relation    to 
sexual  activity  in  men,  185. 
in  women,  190. 


INDEX. 


653 


Ireland,  divorce  in,  461. 

high  status  of  women  in  ancient, 
392. 
Italy,    prostitution    in,    241,    251, 
258,  266. 

Jamaica,    results    of    free    sexual 

unions  in,  388. 
Japan,    attitude   towards    love   in, 
135. 
automatic    legitimation   of   chil- 
dren in,  490. 
divorce   in,  460,   461. 
prostitution  in,  233,  237. 
Jealousy,  563  et  seq. 
Jesus,    184. 
Jews,  as  parents,  6. 

prostitution  among  ancient,  235. 
status  of  women  among,  394. 
Judas  Thomas's  Acts,  156  et  seq. 

Kadishtu,  229. 

Kant,  184. 

Korea,  prostitution  in,  238. 

Lactation,  24. 

Lectures  on  sexual  hygiene,  83. 
Lenclos,  Ninon  de,  246,  308. 
Love    an    essential    part    of    mar- 
riage, 508. 

art  of,  507  et  seq,. 

definition  of,  132  et  seq. 

difficulties  of  art  of,  530,  547. 

for  more  than  one  person,  871. 

future  development  of,  574. 

how  far  an  illusion,  137  et  seq. 

in  childhood,  36  et  seq.,  528. 

in  relation  to  chastity,  172,  176. 

inevitable  mystery  of,  136. 

its  value  for  life,  115  et  seq. 

testimonies    to    immense    impor- 
tance of,  139  et  seq. 
Lust,  in  relation  to  love,  132. 

theological  conception  of,  179. 
Lydian  prostitution,  233,  234. 

Mahommedanism  and  prostitution. 
235. 

and  sanctity  of  sex,  129. 

its  regard  for  chastity,  164. 
Male  continence,  554. 
Malthus,  594. 

Mammary  activity  in  infancy,  34. 
Manuals  of  sexual  hygiene,  53.  81. 
Maoris,  results  of  loss  of  old  faith 
among,  147. 


Marriage,     advantages     of     early, 
379. 

ambil  anak,  391. 

and  prostitution,  225,  296,  363. 

as  a  contract,  470  et  seq. 

as  a  fact,  477   et  seq. 

as  a  sacrament,  435,  479. 

as  an  ethical  sacrament,  479. 

beena,  391. 

by  capture,  148. 

certificates    for,    622. 

criticism  of,  364. 

evolution  of,  421  et  seq. 

for  a  term  of  years,  472. 

from  legal  point  of  view,  375. 

in  early  Christian  times,  429,  et 
seq. 

in  old  English  law,  402. 

in  relation  to  eugenics,  621. 

in  relation  to  morals,  373. 

in  Rome,  428. 

independent  of  forms,  480  et  seq. 

inferior  forms   of,   489. 

love  as  a  factor  of,  508  et  seq. 

modern  tendencies  in  regard  to, 
377  et  seq. 

objections  to  early,  37. 

objects  of,  507. 

procreation  as  a  factor  of,  576 
et  seq. 

Protestant  attitude  towards,  440 
et  seq. 

trial,  379  et  seq. 

variations  in  order  of,  491  et  seq. 
Masturbation    among    prostitutes, 
272. 

anxiety  of  boys  about,  61. 

in  relation  to  sexual  abstinence, 
196. 
Matriarchy,  alleged  primitive,  390. 
Matrilineal  descent,  391. 
Mendelism,  630. 
Mendes,  the  rite  at,  232. 
Menstruation,  brought  on  by  sex- 
ual excitement,  578. 

coitus  during,  533. 
•   hygiene  of,  68  et  seq. 

instruction  regarding,  64  ei  seq. 
Missionaries'    attempt    to    impose 

European  customs.  99  et  seq. 
Modesty  consistent  with  nakedness, 

108. 
Monogamy,  421  et  seq.,  491. 
Montanist  element  in  early  Chris- 
tian literature,  156. 


654 


INDEX. 


Morality,  meaning  of  the  term,  367 

et  seq. 
Motherhood,  early  age  of,  634. 

endowment  of,  630. 
Mothers,  duty  to  instruct  daughters, 
64. 
duty  to  suckle  infant,  24. 
responsibility  for  their  own  pro- 
creative  acts,  586  et  seq. 
schools  for,  29. 

the  sexual  teachers  of  children, 
48  et  seq. 
Mylitta,  prostitution  at  temple  of, 

229. 
Mystery    in    matters    of    sex,    evil 
of,  50,   110. 

Nakedness,      an      alleged      sexual 
stimulant,  97. 

as  a  prime  tonic  of  life,  112. 

consistent  with  modesty,  108. 

educational  value  of,  106. 

hygienic  value  of,  104,  111. 

in  literature  and  art,  90  et  seq. 

in  mediaeval  Europe,  98. 

in  relation  to  sexual  education, 
95  et  seq. 

its  moral  value,  114  et  sdq. 

its   spiritual  value,   102. 

modern  attitude  towards,  101  et 
seq. 
Neo-Malthusianism,  5S8  et  seq. 
Neurasthenia,  sexual,  183,  189,  203. 
Newton,  184. 

New  Zealand,   result  of  decay  of 
tapu  in.  147. 

sexual  freedom  in  ancient,  226. 
Night-courtship  customs,  380. 
Notification  of  Births  Act,  29. 

venereal   diseases,   343. 
Nurture  versus  breed,  34. 
Nutrition    compared   to    reproduc- 
tion, 169,  198,  201. 

Obscenity,  early  Christian  views  of, 

126  'et  seq. 
Orgy,  among  savages,  221. 

in  classic  times,  220. 

in  mediaeval  Christianity,  219. 

its   religious   origin,   218. 

modern  need  of,  222. 
Oneida  Community,  553,  617  et  seq. 
Ouled-Nail  prostitution,  233. 
Ovarian  irritation,  187. 
Ovid,  514. 


Penitentials,  the,  162. 
Physician,    alleged    duty    to    pre- 
scribe sexual  intercourse,  201 
et  seq. 
as  a  social  reformer,  205. 
his  place  in  sexual  hygiene,  84, 
354,  359. 
Platonic  friendship,  571. 
Poetry   in    relation   to   sexual   im- 
pulse, 90. 
Polygamy,  366,  412,  490,  et  seq. 
Precocity,  sexual,  35,  209,  528,  634. 
Pregnancy,    among    primitive 
peoples,   13. 
coitus  during,  16. 
early,  634. 
hygiene  of,  6  et  seq. 
Premature  birth,  10  et  seq. 
Procreation,  best  age  for,   633. 
best  season  for,  638. 
control  of,  578  et  seq. 
its  place  in  marriage,  365,  508. 
methods  of  control  of,  599  et  seq. 
the  science  of,  576  et  seq. 
Promiscuity,    theory    of    primitive, 

284. 
Prostitutes,  as  artists,  299. 

as  guardians  of  the  home,  281  et 

seq. 
at  the  Renaissance,  243  et  seq. 
attitudes  towards  bully,  270. 
in  Austria,  241. 
in  classic  times,  239. 
in  France,  240. 
in  Italy,  241. 

injustice   of    social    attitude   to- 
wards, 310. 
number  of  servants  who  become, 

264  et  seq.,  290  et  seq. 
psychic  and  physical  characteris- 
tics, 274  et  seq. 
tendency  to  homosexuality,  272. 
their  motives  for  adopting  avoca- 
tion, 256  et  seq.,  288  et  seq. 
their  sexual  temperament,  268  et 

seq. 
under  Christianity,  240. 
Prostitution,   among  savages,  226, 
234. 
as  affected  by  Christianity,  239. 
as  an  equivalent  of  criminality, 

267. 
causes  of,  254  et  seq. 
civilizational  value  of,  289  et  seq. 
decay  of  State  regulation  of,  250. 


IXDEX. 


655 


Prostitution,  definition  of,  224. 
economic  factor  of,  259   et  seq. 
essentially  unsatisfactory  nature 

of,  313. 
in  modern  times,  248. 
in  relation  to  marriage,  363. 
in  the  East,  235  et  seq. 
moral  justification  of,  2S0  et  seq. 
need  for  humanizing,  306. 
on  the   stage,   356. 
origin   and  development  of,  224 

et  seq. 
present  social  attitude  towards, 

302  et  seq. 
regulation  of,  249,  331,  339. 
religious,  228  et  seq.,  235. 
rise  of  secular,  234. 
to  acquire  marriage  portion,  233. 
Protestantism,     attitude     towards 

prostitution,  284. 
Prudery  in  ancient  times,  101. 
Puberty,  initiation  at,  among  sav- 
ages, 87  et  seq. 
sexual  education  at,  60,  85. 
sexual   hygiene  at,  209. 
Puericulture,  7  et  seiq. 
Puritans,     attitude     towards     un- 
chastity,  376. 
towards  marriage,  437  et  seq. 

Quaker  conception  of  marriage, 
446. 

Rape,  cannot  be  committed  by  hus- 
band on  wife,  80,  473. 
wedding  night  often   a,   526. 

Religious  prostitution,  228  et  seq., 
235. 

Renaissance,  prostitutes  at  the, 
243  et  seq. 

Reproduction  compared  to  nu- 
trition,  169,   198,  201. 

Responsibility  in  matters  of  sex, 
personal,  349  et  seq.,  405  et 
seq.,  417,  444,  463,  481,  586 
et  seq. 

Rest,  during  pregnancy,  importance 
of,  7  et  seq. 
during  menstruation,  67. 

Ring,  origin  of  wedding,  432. 

Robert  of  Arbrissel,   160. 

Romantic    literature    of    chastity, 
158. 
love,  late  origin  of,  135. 


Rome,  attitude  towards  nakedness 
in  ancient,  96. 

conception  of  the  orgy  in,  220. 

marriage  in,  428. 

prostitution  in,  238. 

status  of  women  in,  395. 
Russia,  divorce  in,  457. 

sexual  freedom  in,  384. 

Sabbath  orgy,  221. 
Sacrament,  marriage  as  a,  435,  479. 
Sacred  prostitution,  228,  235. 
Sale-marriage,  432. 
Savages,  prostitution  among,  226. 
rarity  of  love  among,  134. 
sexual    education   among,   87    et 
seq.,  515  et  seq: 
Scandinavian    method    of    dealing 

with  venereal  diseases,  344. 
School,  its  place  in  sexual  educa- 
tion, 56  et  seq.,  83. 
Schools  for  mothers,  29. 
Seduction,  early  Church's  attitude 

towards,  180. 
Servants  frequently  become  prosti- 
tutes, 264  et  seq.,  290  et  seq. 
Sexual  abstinence,  169  et  seq. 
Sexual  anaesthesia,  a  cause  of,  526. 
Sexual  education,  33  et  seq. 

among  savages,  87  et  seq.,  515  et 

seq. 
and  coitus,  510. 
and  nakedness,  95  et  seq. 
Sexual  hygiene  and  art,  92,  223. 
and  literature,  89. 
and  religion,  85. 
at  puberty,  209. 
at  school,  56  et  seq. 
in  childhood,  40  et  seq. 
in  relation  to  sexual  abstinence, 
206  et  seq. 
Sexual  innocence,  value  of,  44. 
Sexual  morality,  362  et  seq. 
Sexual  neurasthenia,  183,  189,  203. 
Sexual  physiology  in  education,  57. 
Sexual  precocity,  35,  209,  528,  634. 
Shakespeare  in  relation  to  sexual 

education,  90. 
Slavs,  sexual  freedom  among,  227, 

384. 
Socialism  and  individualism,  24. 
Spain,  prostitution  in,  266. 
Stage,  prostitution  on  the,  356. 


656 


INDEX. 


State,  its  interest  in  children,  22, 
488,  505. 

nurseries,  31. 
Sterility  in  relation  to  gonorrhoea, 

329. 
Stirpiculture,   618. 

causes  of,  631. 
Stork  legend  of  origin  of  babies,  41. 
Suckling   in   relation   to   puericul- 

ture,   24. 
Swahili,   sexual   education  among, 

516. 
Switzerland,  divorce  in,  457. 

prostitution  in,  251. 
Syphilis,  its  prevalence,  326. 

nature  and  results  of,  324  et  seq. 

of  the  innocent,  336. 

questions  of  the  origin   of,   321 
et  seq. 

And  see  Venereal  Diseases. 

Tahiti,  chastity  and  unchastity  in 
old,   148. 

Teachers  and  sexual  hygiene,  83. 

Teutonic   custom,   influence  on   po- 
sition of  women,  401  et  seq. 
influence  on  marriage,  431  et  seq. 

Theatre,    as    a   beneficial    form   of 
the  orgy,  222. 
early     Christian     attitude     to- 
wards, 220. 

Thekla,  legend  of,  156. 

Town  life   and  sexuality,   38,  293 
et  seq. 

Trappists,  regime   of,  208. 

Trent,  Council  of,  434,  437. 

Trial-marriage,  379  et  seq. 

Urban  life  and  sexuality,  38,  293 

et  seq. 
Uterine  fibroids,  187. 

Vaginismus,   525. 
Vasectomy,  615. 

Venereal  diseases,  conquest  of  the, 
316  et  seq. 
free  treatment  of,  345. 
need   of    enlightenment   concern- 
ing, 350  et  seq. 
notification  of,  343  et  se<q. 
personal  responsibility  for,   349 

et  seq. 
punishment  for  transmission  of, 
345  et  seq. 
Venice,   prostitution   in,   241,   245, 
246. 


Virgin,  intercourse  with  as  a  cure 

for  syphilis,  337. 
original    meaning    of    the   term, 

165. 
Virginity,    why   valued,    147,    165, 

175,   403,   469. 

Wagner's  music  dramas,  223. 
Wales,  divorce  in  ancient,  461. 
White  slavery,  302. 
Wife-purchase  among  ancient  Ger- 
mans, 431. 

in  modern  times,  403. 
Woman   movement,    4,    68,    409   et 

seq. 
Women,    alleged   tendency   to   dis- 
simulation, 412. 

among  the  Jews,  394. 

and  sexual  abstinence,  185  et  seq. 

erotic  characteristics  of,  541. 

ignorance  of  art  of  love,  520. 

in  Arabia,  394. 

in  Babylonia,  393. 

in  Egypt,  393,  408. 

in  modern  Europe,  397. 

in  relation  to  divorce,  468. 

in  relation  to  free  sexual  unions, 
386  et  seq. 

in  Rome,  395,  428. 

inequality  before  the  law,  473. 

moral    equality   with  men,   438, 
495. 

must  not  be  compulsory  mothers, 
586. 

not  attracted  to   innocent  men, 
524. 

position  as  affected  by  Teutonic 
custom,  401  et  seq. 

procreative  age  of,  634. 

their  high  status  in  ancient  Ire- 
land, 392. 

their  need  of  economic  indepen- 
dence, 407. 

their  need  of  personal  responsi- 
bility, 405,  469. 

their  need  of  sexual  knowledge, 
44  et  seq.,  351. 

understand  love  better  than  men, 
527. 

Yakuts,  attitude  towards  virginity, 

147. 
Yuman  Indians,   sexual   initiation 
among,  88. 

Zoology  and  sexual  education,  59. 


